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RUDIMENTS 

OF 

PUBLIC SPEAKING 

AND DEBATE: 

OR, 

jghtta on ttje ^plication of ITogit. 

By G. J.HOLYOAKE, 

AUTHOR OF ''MATHEMATICS NO MYSTEBY," " E G I OF 
FACTS," ETC. 

"Common sense is the genius of humanity." — Guizot. 

FIRST AMERICAN-, FROM TEE SECOND LONDON EDITION. 



leto |*ri: 

McELRATH AND BARKER, 

No. 17 SPRUCE STREET. 
1853. 






*s± 



PRINTED BY 

Billin and Beothers, 20 North "William St., N. T. 



CONTENTS. 



«-« 



PROEM. 



PART L— DERIVATIVE POWERS. 



Chap. I. Rhetoric. 
Chap. II. Delivery. *•" 
Chap. IIL Persuasion. 



Chap. [Y. Method. 
Chap. V. Discipline. 
Chap. VI. Tact. 



PART II.— ACQUIRED POWERS. 



Chap. VII. Originalit}'. 
Chap. VIII. Heroism. 
Chap. IX. Proportion. 
Chap. X. Style. 
Chap. XL Similes, 
Chap. XII. Pleasantry. 



Chap. XIII. Energy. 
Chap. XIV. Eloquence. 
Chap. XV. Premeditation. 
Chap. XVI. Reality. 
Chap. XVII. Effectiveness. 
Chap. XVIII. Mastery. 



PART III— APPLIED POWERS. 



Chap. XIX. Criticism. 
Chap. XX. Debate. 
Chap. XXL Personalities. 



Chap. XXII. Questioning. 
Chap. XXIII. Repetition. 
Chap. XXIV. Poetry. 



PROEM. 



Tee highest truths of transcendental metaphysics will one day Teach the popu» 
lace. Not only the standard of intellect, hut that of morality, will be raised. The 
race of the Papinians, the Cromwells, and Marvels, will he multiplied. It was once 
said all could not learn to read, write, and account. Now they do learn these and 
other things. They will one day learn all things. Intellect will conquer all obsta- 
cles, and teach the human race to realise untold perfection. 

But it will be accomplished piecemeal. Progression is a series of stages. Indi- 
viduals first, then groups, then classes, then nations, are raised. You can no more 
introduce, at once, the multitude to the highest results of philosophy, than you can 
take, a man to the summit of a monument without ascending the steps, or reach a 
distant land without travelling the journey. This book is a stage. As the preceding 
ones in this series, it is designed for the class of young thinkers to whom knowledge 
has given some intellectual aspiration, and fate denied the means of its scholastic 
gratification. It is therefore neither elementary nor ultimate, but a medium be- 
tween the two. It addresses itself to a want. It deals in results. It dictates doing. 

Spontaneous life is the life of the people. Their knowledge is confined to phe- 
nomena. Their practical philosophy is the reality of Hobbism. Disguise it as we 
may, their sensation is suffering, their reflection, revenge — their sole business, the 
betterance of their condition. All you can do is to guide their rude interpretation 
of nature, men, and manners— to give plain method to their classification, coherence 
to their inferences, justice to their invectives. They want no new philosophy. 
There are more old ones which are go^.l than they can study. There is more wis- 
dom extant than they can master, more precepts than they can apply. "Weapons 
innumerable surround them, of which they have to be taught the use. Their 
wntchword is work. The scaling-ladders of the wise, which they, having mounted 
the citadel of wisdom, have kicked down, are yet of service to those who are below. 
I have picked a few of these ladders up, and reared them in these pages for the use 
of those who have vet to rise. 



6 Pro e m . 

Fastidious punctilios of scholarship would he out of place in such a book as this. 
He who addresses the artisan class, must, like the Spartans, write to be read, and 
speak to be understood. Mechanics and Literary Institutions cannot cultivate 
their frequenters, and those greatly mistake the requirements of learning and the 
state of the people who think they can. They can stimulate improvement, and 
this is their province. Nations never become civilised and learned till subsistence 
is secure and leisure abundant. So of individuals. The populace are still engaged 
in the lowest battle of animal wants — and even the middle classes are in the warfare 
of intellectual wants. In the ancient state of society war was the only trade, force 
the only teacher, and the battle-a-xe the only argument. A transition has indeed 
taken place — the time, and means, and ends are changed — but not the relative posi- 
tion of men. No more do we struggle for the victory of conquest, but we struggle 
for wages and more intelligence. Knowledge has reached the mass so as to make 
them sensible of their ignorance without diminishing their privations, and they are 
now engaged in a double battle against "Want and Error. The struggle, therefore, is 
resolute. The training wanted is practical — the weapons serviceable and ready for 
use. Provided the literary sword will cut, few will quarrel about the polish. If 
the blade has good temper, he who needs it will put up with a plain hilt. 

"When I contemplate the appliances which learning and science present to the 
scholar, and see how multiplied are his means of knowing the truth upon all sub- 
jects, I cannot conceive that he can be struggling like the untaught thinker be- 
tween right and wrong. To the scholar, truth and falsehood must be apparent; and 
&ince the learned do not penetrate to the intellect of the populace, and establish in- 
telligence among them, it must be that the learned want courage or condescension, 
or that common sense among them is petrified in formulas. We want either a ham- 
mer or a fire to break the spell or dissolve the ice. 

Those words of G-uizot whieh I have placed on the title-page, indicate the broad 
obviousness of precept aimed at in this work. Iludibras tells us that — 

All the logician's rules 

Teach nothing but to name their tools. 

I have attempted to recast this order. In the " Logic of Facts 1 ' I have dealt with the 
materials of reasoning. This is such " Application" of them as I should make. In 
this matter I have striven to speak without affecting superiority or infallibility. 
Writer and reader stand on the same level— and from a common ground thus 
established, mutual inquiry starts. The information attempted is essentially prac- 
tical. It is not the heavy inexorable theory of the last age applied to the bustle and 
elasticity of this; but upon the learning of the schools is endeavoured to be en- 
grafted the learning of life, the literature of the streets and of trade, the logic of the 
newspaper and the platform, and the rhetoric of daily conversation— that the reader 
may acquire a public as well as a scholastic spirit: the aim being to elicit origi- 



Proem. 1 

nality, to realise a distinct individual, who shall go forth into the arena of the 
world with determinate and disciplined powers capable of usefully influencing its 
affairs. 

In the division of the Parts and the succession of the Chapters there is no preten- 
sion to scientific classification. The distinction drawn between the Parts, though 
not recognised, will, I believe, be found practically suggestive. The order of the 
Chapters is that which seemed to me to be natural, at least to throw light, one upon 
the subject of the other. In " Hints'' a greater licence is allowed, and strict sequence 
is not so much looked for as suggestiveness. 

The First Paet treats of the Eudiments of Rhetoric, the elements which the 
student derives from the instruction of others. After the " Proem 1 ' has informed the 
reader of the design of the book, " Rhetoric" -defines and explains the subject ; — 
"Delivery" commences with the laws of tone, founded on the study of feeling. 
" The Theory of Persuasion" accumulates materials from the study of manifestation 
— "Method" teaches how to use these materials with power — "Discipline" teaches 
how this power is confirmed — "Tact" teaches its special application. 

The Seooxd Part includes those topics, a knowledge of which is not so much, 
or, rather, not so well, derived from the instruction of others, as acquired by the 
personal observations of the student. Doubtless the teacher can impart them, but 
only in a qualified sense. The student will never excel, unless he trust to himself 
and to his independent exertions. The practical relation between the subjects in 
.this Part, seem to be this,— '• Originality" is a source of independent power—" Hero- 
ism ' its manifestation—" Proportion" prunes " Heroism" of Exaggeration and Declara- 
tion — " Style" indicates individuality of expression — " Similes" offer themselves as 
weapons of expression — "Pleasantry" its relief— " Energy" is a species of lemma to 
Eloquence— "Eloquence" marshals the powers to effect conviction on a given point 
— " Premeditation" teaches how effect is to be provided for — " Reality" infuses confi- 
dence— *■ Effectiveness' - sums up the condition of complete impression—" Mastery" 
denotes the signs of rhetorical perfection. 

The Third Part, again, relates in its distinction rather to the student than to the 
subject intrinsically considered. This Part treats of topics in which the student 
finds the application of previous acquisitions. " Criticism," applies preceding topics 
to the development of beauties and correction of faults — "Debate" is tact applied 
to conversion—" Questioning,'' or Socratic Disputation, is the auxiliary of Debate — 
" Personalities" treat of the conduct of Controversy — " Repetition" is the philosophy 
of Reformation—" Poetry" is the highest result of Rhetoric. 

Whosever well-expressed thought I have found which illustrated my subject, I 
have taken, and, what is somewhat more unusual, I have acknowledged it: because 
the author of a useful idea ought to be remembered as one who leaves a legacy. 
Through this punctiliousness the critics will say that I have not composed, but that 



8 Proem. 

I have compiled a book. Though I see books published around me, in which there 
is more that belongs to others than in this book — but the obligations being con- 
cealed — the ostensible authors get the credit of being original. We are all of us in- 
debted to those who have thought before us, and we have to say with Montaigne— 
" I have gathered a nosegay of flowers in which there is nothing of my own but the 
string which ties them.'' But in this case the string which ties them is my own. 
The architect (to pass from nature to art) has the credit of his conception and erec- 
tion of an edifice. Tet he does not create the materials. The materials he finds, 
but he gives them proportion, place, and design. The idea is his ; and if good, we 
credit him with distinct merit. Why, therefore, should not the author of a book, 
even if made up of other men's materials, be credited also with distinct merit, if his 
work has an idea which subordinates the materials he employs and shapes them to 

a new utility ? 

G. J. II. 



PUBLIC SPEAKING AND DEBATE. 

PART I. 

DEKIVATIVE POWEKS. 

CHAPTER I. 



Rhetoric is the application of Logic to mankind. By reason- 
ing we satisfy ourselves, by rhetoric we satisfy others. The 
rhetorician is commonly considered most perfect who carries 
his point by whatever means. Men like to see the man who 
is a match for events, and equal to any exigency. But it is 
plain we must make some distinction as to the manner in which 
a point is to be carried. We may as well say that a man may 
carry the point of life, that is, fill his pockets by any means, 
as influence men by any means. A low appeal to the passions 
we call claptrap. I know no better definition of rhetoric than 
Dr. Johnson's definition of oratory. " Oratory," said the Dr., 
" is the power of beating down your adversaries' arguments, 
and putting better in their places." 

Descending more into detail, the description given by Lord 
Herbert of Cherbury is the happiest and healthiest delineation 
of rhetoric that has fallen under my notice. 

" It would be fit that some time be spent in learning rhe- 
1* 



10 Public Speaking and Debate. 

toric or oratory, to the intent that upon all occasions you may 
express yourself with eloquence and grace ; for, as it is not 
enough for a man to have a diamond unless it is polished and 
cut out into its due angles, so it will not be sufficient for a 
man to have a great understanding in all matters, unless the 
said understanding be not only polished and clear, but under- 
set and holpen a little with those figures, tropes, and colours 
which rhetoric affords, where there is use of persuasion. I 
can by no means yet commend an affected eloquence, there 
being nothing so pedantical, or indeed that would give more 
suspicion that the truth is not intended, than to use overmuch 
the common forms prescribed in schools. It is well said by 
them, that there are two parts of eloquence necessary and 
recommendable ; one is, to speak hard things plainly, so that 
when a knotty or intricate business, having no method or 
coherence in its parts, shall be presented, it will be a singular 
part of oratory to take those parts asunder, set them together 
aptly, and so exhibit them to the understanding. And this 
part of rhetoric I much commend to everybody ; there being 
no true use of speech but to make things clear, perspicuous, 
and manifest, which otherwise would be perplexed, doubtful, 
and obscure. 

" The other part of oratory is to speak common things 
ingeniously or wittily ; there being no little vigour and force 
added to words, when they are delivered in a neat and fine 
way, and somewhat out of the ordinary road, common and 
dull language relishing more of the clown than the gentleman. 
But herein also affectation must be avoided ; it being better 
for a man by a native and clear eloquence to express himself, 
than by those words which may smell either of the lamp or 
inkhorn ; so that, in general, one may observe, that men who 
fortify and uphold their speeches with strong and evident 
reasons, have ever operated more on the minds of the auditors 
than those who have made rhetorical excursions. Aristotle 
hath written a book of rhetoric, a work in my opinion not 



Rhetoric. 11 

inferior to his best pieces, whom therefore with Cicero de Ora- 
tore, as also Quinctilian, you may read for your instruction 
how to speak ; neither of which two yet I can think so exact 
in their orations, but that a middle style will be of more effi- 
cacy, Cicero in my opinion being too long and tedious, Quinc- 
tilian too short and concise." 

" Between grammar, logic, and rhetoric, there exists a close 
and happy connexion, which reigns through all science, and 
extends to all the powers of eloquence. 

" Grammar traces the operations of thought in known and 
received characters, and enables polished nations amply to 
confer on posterity the pleasures of intellect, the improvements 
of science, and the history of the world. 

" Logic converses with ideas, adjusts them with propriety 
and truth, and gives the whole an elevation in the mind conso- 
nant to the order of nature or the flight of fancy. 

"Rhetoric, lending a spontaneous aid to the defects of 
language, applies her warm and glowing tints to the portrait, 
and exhibits the grandeur of the universe, the productions of 
genius, and all the works of art, as copies of the fair original."* 

He who gives directions for the attainment of. oratory is 
supposed, if a public speaker, to be capable of illustrating his. 
own precepts. 

" He may be thought to challenge criticism ; and his own 
performances may be condemned by a reference to his own 
precepts ; or, on the other hand, his precepts may be under- 
valued, through his own failures in their application. Should 
tliis take place in the present instance, I have only to urge, 
with Horace in his Art of Poetry, that a whetstone, though 
itself incapable of cutting, is yet useful in sharpening steel. 
Ko system of instruction will completely equalise natural 
powers : and yet it may be of service towards their improve- 
ment. The youthful Achilles acquired skill in hurling the 

* Spectator, ~So. 421. 



12 Public Speaking and Debate. 

javelin under the instruction of Chiron, though the master 
could not compete with the pupil in vigour of arm.* 

But there is little danger, in these days, of any serious 
judgment being passed upon the indifferent exemplar of the 
rhetorical maxims he lays down. Our orators escape as 
our statues do. Good public monuments are so scarce that the 
people are no judges of art, and great speakers so seldom arise 
that the people are no judges of oratory. England has not 
reached the age of excellence in this respect. Great events 
can excite it, but only a national refinement, including opulence 
and a liberal philosophy, can sustain it. The power of oratory 
requires the union of intellect, leisure and health, discipline of 
thought, accuracy of expression, method, a manly spirit, an 
absolute taste, copiousness of information upon the given sub- 
ject, and concentration. Oratory — by which term I always 
mean the highest efforts in the art of public persuasion — might 
exist in the church but for its dread of imitating the theatre. 
It is suppressed among the dissenters by the influence of evan- 
gelism. Did this not exist, their precarious pay would deter 
them from the pursuit of the art. The bar is too full of busi- 
ness and too anxious for fees, to reach much distinction where 
leisure and choice are necessary. The politician is generally 
indolent if not dependent, and if necessitous he has to strug- 
gle for himself when he should be struggling for excellence. 
Besides these drawbacks, there are various popular prejudices 
which few minds are strong enough to withstand, and which 
deter the young aspirant after eloquence. Under various 
heads, as "Premeditation," "Discipline," and others, these 
points of prejudice will be discussed. 

* Whately's Rhetoric, preface. 



Delivery. 13 



CHAPTER II. 



" Elocution," says Walker, " in the modern sense of the 
word, seems to signify that pronunciation which is given to 
words when they are arranged into sentences, and form dis- 
course." The power of distinct and forcible pronunciation is 
the basis of delivery. Between deliberate, full-toned, and 
energetic speaking, and feeble, indistinct, and spiritless utter- 
ance, there is the difference of live and dead oratory. 

The rudiments of speaking are few and simple. Towels 
should have a bold, round, mellow tone. This is the basis 
of speaking. A slight, short, mincing pronunciation of the 
accented Towels is the prime fault to be avoided. There is 
scarcely anything more distinguishes a person of a mean, from 
one of a good education, than the pronunciation of the unac- 
cented vowels. 

Audibility depends chiefly on articulation, and articulation 
depends much on the distinctness with which we hear the final 
consonants. 

R has two sounds, a rough and a smooth one. The rough 
r is proper at the beginning of words, and the smooth r at the 
end of words, or when succeeded by a consonant. The audi- 
bility of the r in each case gives strength to the utterance. 

In about twenty-two words in our language, beginning 
with h, the h is not sounded. These words must be carefully 
attended to, and all other words beginning with h must have 
that letter distinctly heard. In illustration of this neglect of 
aspiration where proper, teachers of elocution are accustomed 
to say, that if the Indian swallows the sword we (h)eat the 
poker. 



14 Public Speaking and Debate. 

A strong delivery is to be constantly cultivated — that is, 
an energy that shall prevent drawling and a slowness that shall 
avoid mumbling words or chopping half the sounds away, as 
hasty speaking does. Take time to fully articulate and into- 
nate. Speak " trippingly" without tripping. If you must be 
extreme, better be solemn than hasty. 

Robert Hall, whose talent for extempore speaking was 
such that, when eleven years of age, he was set up to preach 
extempore to a select auditory of full-grown men, says of 
himself, "To me to speak slow was ruin. You know, sir, 
that force or momentum is conjointly as the body and the 
velocity ; therefore, as my voice is feeble, what is wanted in 
body must be made up in velocity." This is a mathematical 
figure of speech, and is more true of Dynamics than Rhe- 
toric. This remark has seriously misled many young speakers. 
There is a distinction to be noted between a small voice 
arising from peculiarity in the conformation of the larynx, 
and the feeble voice which arises from the narrow chest or 
from physical debility. Unless there is great strength to sup- 
port any momentum imparted, indistinctness and alternations 
of screechings and whispers will be the inevitable results. 

At a Corn-law meeting held in Glasgow, in 1845, I sat at 
half distance from the platform. Having offered my services 
to the Lord Provost, I was uncertain whether I should not be 
required to take part in the proceedings. I was, therefore, 
anxious to hear all that was said. It was at this time that I 
first felt perfectly the annoyance of indistinct speaking. At 
the Newhall Hill meetings in Birmingham I had been accus- 
tomed to hear the Warwickshire orators roar, but in Glasgow 
I found they only spoke, and spoke as though they were paid 
for the sound they made, and did not get a good price for it. 
At length the Rev. Dr. King arose, who spoke with strong 
deliberateness. His speech was ably conceived, and wisely 
delivered. Every word fell on the ear like the steady tolling 
of a bell. His voice was the anodyne of the night. When- 



Delivery. 15 

ever I go to a public meeting I pray that one Dr. King may 
be present. 

It is said of Mr. Macaulay (I think by Francis in his 
" Orators of the Age") that when an opening is made in a 
discussion in the House of Commons, he rises, or rather darts 
up from his seat, and plunges at once into the very heart of 
his subject, without exordium or apologetic preface. In fact, 
you have for a few seconds a voice pitched in alto, monoto- 
nous, and rather shrill, pouring forth words with inconceivable 
velocity, ere you have become aware that a new speaker, and 
one of no common order, has broken in upon the debate. A 
few seconds more, and cheers, perhaps from all parts of the 
house, rouse you completely from your apathy, compelling you 
to follow that extremely voluble and not very enticing voice, 
in its. rapid course through the subject on which the speaker is 
entering, with a resolute determination, as it seems, never to 
pause. You think of an express train, which does not stop 
even at the chief stations. On, on he speeds, in full reliance 
on his own momentum, never stopping for words, never stop- 
ping for thoughts, never halting for an instant, even to take 
breath, his intellect gathering new vigour as it proceeds, haul- 
ing the subject after him, and all its possible attributes and 
illustrations, with the strength of a giant, leaving a line of 
light on the pathway his mind has trod, till, unexhausted, and 
apparently inexhaustible, he brings this remarkable effort to a 
close by a peroration ■ so highly sustained in its declamatory 
power, so abounding in illustration, so admirably framed to 
crown and clench the whole oration, that surprise, if it has 
even begun to wear off, kindles anew, and the hearer is left 
utterly prostrate and powerless by the whirlwind of ideas and 
emotions that has swept over him. This, however, only illus- 
trates the liberty a man may take with elocution if he has genius 
to compensate for it. That member must beware who attempts 
to charm the House of Commons by a monotonous alto with- 
out Maeaulay's wit, his power of enlightenment and fecundity 
of illustration. 



16 Public Speaking and Debate. 

From Quinctilian to Blair, rhetoricians have insisted on 
the value of accuracy of expression, as promotive of accuracy 
of thought. Accuracy of delivery tends equally to this result ; 
it does more, it improves the memory as well as the understand- 
ing, and imparts the power of concatenation of speech. The 
naturally voluble may dispense with this aid, but others will 
find it the only mode of learning public speaking. 

A clergyman, who in his early days denied that grammar 
or emphasis had anything to do with pulpit exercises, one day 
found his mistake by the laughter created on his reading this 
text : — " And he spake to his sons, saying, Saddle me, the a ss, 
and they saddled Mm." Of this same divine it is told that a 
man whom he reprimanded for swearing, replied that he did 
not see any harm in it. " Xo harm in it," said the minister ; 
" why do you not know the commandment, ' Swear not at all V n 
" I do not swear at all," said the man, " I only swear at 
those who annoy me." 

The emphasis which is suggested by the sense is the best 
guide. Let a person make sure of the sense, and his emphasis 
will be natural and varied. An active and original conception 
can alone produce personality of enunciation, which is the 
chief charm of oratory. Conception is the sole governor of 
intonation. Of the delicious magic of inflection Eben Jones 
has given us a poet's idea in his lines " To a Personification of 
Ariel at the Theatre." 



If a new sound should music through the sky, 

How would all hearing drink the challenging tone; 

And when thou uttered'st thy denying reply 

To this questioning of love, as Ariel alone 

Only could utter it, suddenly making known 

New voice, new human music — then did burn • 

Each listener, to divine, ere it was gone, 

What feelings toned it; though none might learn, 

How many, divine and deep, in that sweet " No" did yearn. 



The offensiveness of affectation was justly satirised in the 



Delivery. 17 

confessions of a dandy given in a recent romance. Mr. Affec- 
tion is recounting his rejection by a young lady, upon whom 
he had afflicted his attentions. " ' You are mistaken !' said she, 
replying to my look, ' it was not your dress, — it was not your 
manners. The young gentleman who comes from Bond-street 
to tune our piano, is quite as affable, and much more dressy/ 
' The people at the Royal Lodge, probably, afford you some 
little insight into my condition, as a pretext for your doing me 
the honour of admitting me into your acquaintance/ said I, 
with considerable bitterness, for I was stung home. ' No — it 
was your voice, — it was the hypocritical modulation of your 
voice that satisfied me you had moved in the best society/ 
replied Miss Vavasour, with provoking coolness ; ' I saw that 
you were a most delicate monster ; that you had a voice 
for me, and another for Annie, — a third for the pony, — a 
fourth for the lodge-keepers : — there was nothing natural 
about you V " 

Attracted by the pretensions of a placard, adorned by a 
testimonial from the Times, I went, in Glasgow, to hear some 
professional recitations. One of them was the " Story of a 
Broken Heart." The unfortunate girl, of whom it was told, 
did not die immediately, but it struck me she would have done 
so, had she heard Mr. Wilson recite her story. The subject 
was that piece of graceful effeminacy, in which Washington 
Irving has told, with drawing-room sentimentality, the story 
of the proud love of the daughter of Curran for the unhappy 
and heroic Emmet. 

No one can recite with propriety what he does not feel, and 
the key to gesture, as well to modulation, is earnestness. No 
actor can pourtray character unless he can realise it, and he 
can only realise it by making it for a time his own. Roger 
Kemble's wife had been forbidden to marry an actor, and her 
father was inexorable at her disobedience ; but after he had 
seen her husband upon the stage, he relented, and forgave her 
with this observation — " Well, well ! I see you have not diso- 



18 Public Speaking and Debate. 

beyed me after all ; for the man is not an actor, and never will 
be an actor !" 

As the presence of genius will compensate for the neglect of 
the elocution of utterance, so earnestness and great ideas will 
produce eloquence of effect without gesture in delivery. It is 
said of Robert Hall that the text of his discourse was usually 
announced in the feeblest tone, and in a rapid manner, so as 
frequently to be inaudible to the majority of his congregation. 
After the exordium, he would commonly hint at, rather than 
explicitly announce, the very simple divisions of the subject on 
which he intended to treat. Then his thoughts would begin 
to multiply, and the rapidity of his utterance, always consid- 
erable, would increase as he proceeded and kindled. He had 
no oratorical action, scarcely any kind of motion, excepting an 
occasional lifting or waving of the right hand, and, in his most 
impassioned moments, an alternate retreat and advance in the 
pulpit by a short step. Sometimes the pain in his back, to 
which he was so great a martyr, would induce hihTto throw 
his arm behind, as if to give himself ease or support in the long- 
continued, and, to him, afflictive position of standing to ad- 
dress the people. Nothing of the effect which he produced 
depended on extraneous circumstances. There was no pomp, 
no rhetorical flourish, and few, though whenever they did oc- 
cur, very appropriate, images — -excepting towards the close of 
his sermon, when his imagination became excursive, and he 
winged his way through the loftiest sphere of contemplation. 
His sublimest discourses were in the beginning didactic and 
argumentative, then descriptive and pathetic, and, finally, in 
the highest and best sense, imaginative. Truth (to him) was 
their universal element, and to enforce its claims was his con- 
stant aim. Whether he attempted to engage the reason, the 
affections, or the fancy, all was subsidiary to this great end. 
He was always in earnest — profoundly in earnest. But it is 
also true that as a chaste, concise, and energetic style, is more 
effective than a florid, turgid and prolix one, so the judicious 



Theory of Persuasion. 19 

employment of moderate gesture is more effective upon the 
genins of the English people, who love moderation, than any 
possible amplification of spasmodic attitudes or redundancy of 
giim ace. 

The prompting of Lucio to Isabel, when pleading before 
Angelo for the life of her brother, as rendered by Shakspeare 
in Measure for Measure, is one of the happiest practical les- 
sons in elocutionary art on record. As a piece of preceptive 
teaching, neither the rhetoric of ancient or modern times has 
produced anything so happy, so concise, and yet so compre- 
hensive, as Hamlet's directions to his players. It is a manual 
of elocution in miniature. 



CHAPTER III. 

THEORY OF PERSUASION. 

"Rhetoric," says Plato, "is the art of ruling the minds of 
men :" but to rule mind you must know it. One touch of na- 
ture makes the whole world kin : but we cannot touch nature 
through the rules of art without knowing nature. " He who 
in an enlightened and literary society aspires to be a great poet 
must become a little child. He takes to pieces the whole web 
of his mind."* This is what the young rhetorician must do. 
He must tread backwards the path of life to the first moment 
of consciousness, and ask all possible questions of his own ex- 
perience. Carlyle has said that a healthy man never asks 
himself such personal questions. But a thoughtful man does. 
Could the disembodied experience of men be presented to view, 
so that the conscious life of each could be palpable in bodily 
form, how few figures would present the entire lineaments of 



: llacaulay, Grit and Hist. Essays, to!, i. 



20 Public Speaking and Debate. 

mankind. We should behold an assemblage of mutilated fig- 
ures, the limbs of some, the arms of others, the trunk, or the 
head, would be invisible — so little, as respects consciousness, 
do men generally possess themselves. As, however, man is 
himself essentially his own standard of judgment, is himself 
the measure of other men, it is inevitable that he will form 
a defective estimate of others who is defective himself. The 
rhetorician, then, who would hope to operate on the natures 
of others, must primarily make himself acquainted with his 
own. 

An appeal to experience is the best test we have of the 
force of an inducement. " The argument," says Emerson, 
" which has not the power to reach my own practice, I may 
well doubt will fail to reach yours. I have heard an experienced 
counsellor say, that he never feared the effect upon a jury, of 
a lawyer who does not believe in his heart that his client ought 
to have a verdict." A remarkable instance of the result of an 
appeal to personal conviction is afforded in Bailey's Review of 
Berkeley's Theory of Vision. " Many years ago," says Mr. 
Bailey, " I held what may be styled a derivative opinion in 
favour of Berkeley's Theory of Vision, but having in the 
course of a philosophical discussion had occasion to explain it, 
I found on attempting to State in my own language the 
grounds on which it rested, that they no longer appeared to 
me to be so clear and conclusive as I had fancied them to be. 
I determined to make it the subject of a patient and dispas- 
sionate examination. The result has been a clear conviction 
in my own mind of its erroneousness, and a desire to state to 
the philosophical world the grounds on which that conviction 
has been formed." A philosophical illustration of the truth of 
Emerson's observation, that that statement is only fit to be 
made public which you have come at in attempting to satisfy 
your own curiosity. Men may live, and think, and reason, 
with the mere surface knowledge which life presents to every 
observer, but no one can master persuasion, as an art, unless 



Theory of Persuasion. 21 

he passes in review the origin of ideas and analyses the motives 
of men. 

A sound theory of intelligence is the basis of all systematic 
persuasion. Metaphysical philosophy has been prolific in its 
dissertations on the facts and attributes of human mentality, 
but the classification of intelligence laid down by some of the 
more judicious followers of Gall is the most scientific, and, con- 
sequently, the most intelligible which the student can follow. 
It is not possible to indicate a particular theory in detail, with 
a chance of its being universally useful. For the general 
characteristics of humanity are variously combined with the 
national, local, and individual, in every audience who may be 
addressed by tongue or pen. _ The simple elements of human- 
ity, like the letters of the alphabet, are, according to the 
arrangement of circumstances, spread out into countless vol- 
umes of character, each written in a peculiar language, and 
requiring a copious glossary to render it intelligible to the 
reader . * The general principles, say of phrenology, indicate the 
outlines of human nature, and the study of men and manners 
fills up the detail. An old writer, I think Ralph Cudworth, 
says, " It is acknowledged by all, that sense is passion. And 
there is in all sensation, without dispute, first a passion in the 
body of the sentient, which bodily passion is nothing else but 
local motion impressed upon the nerves from the objects with- 
out, and thence propagated and communicated to the brain, 
where all sensation is made. For there is no other action of 
one body upon another, nor other change or mutation of bodies 
conceivable or intelligible, besides local motion — which motion 
in that body which moves another, is called action ; in that 
which is moved by another, passion. And, therefore, when a 
compound object very remotely distant is perceived by us, since 
it is by some passion made upon our body, there must of neces- 
sity be a continual propagation of some local motion of press- 

* Mrs. L. Grimstone. 



22 Public Speaking and Debate. 

tire from thence unto the organs of our sense or nerves, and 
so unto the brain. As when we see many fixed stars spark- 
ling in a clear night, though they be all of them so many semi- 
diameters of the earth distant from us, yet it must, of neces- 
sity, be granted, that there are local motions or pressure from 
them, which we call the light of them, propagated continually 
or uninterruptedly through the fluid heaven, unto our optic 
nerves, or else we could not see them." This indicates very 
plainly the philosophy of impressions. We have nothing to 
do here with the controversies of metaphysicians concerning 
the transcendentalism of intuitive knowledge. It may be 
supernatural. It is, however, certain that a great proportion 
of human knowledge is the result of material relations, and to 
these relations the precepts of knowledge apply. We may, 
therefore, indicate with sufficient accuracy for practical pur- 
poses, that the consciousness of external things is produced or 
generated by the actions of those things on the organs of sense. 
The brain has no power to create, only a susceptibility to receive 
notions. The brain is the forge of thought,* and the rhetorician 
is the smith who hammers out ideas in it. 

So far forth as human conduct is influenced by material 
considerations, and these are capable of being combined into a 
system, confidence can be imparted to the speaker, and cer- 
tainty infused into his efforts. 

It might be illustrated at considerable length and by distin- 
guished examples, that appeals to religious sentiments will 
always be avoided by a judicious orator, when addressing mixed 
assemblies. They are proper enough when spoken to a reli- 
gious audience, but when employed for the purpose of influ- 
encing a mixed meeting they may fail to affect a considerable 
portion. The experienced and well informed speaker has 
always a wider resource. He can draw his arguments from 
moral and political considerations, founded on utility. These 

* C&rlyle. 



Theory of Persuasion. 23 

all men can understand and feel. In those cases in which an 
orator cannot conscientiously restrict himself to this species of 
reasoning, he must take the other course, but let him not cal- 
culate on complete success or universal impressions. 

The great business is to find out the right notion, and 
adapt it to the understandings of those whom we address. This 
world is very matter-of-fact, men are very much the creatures 
of ideas. Notions govern everything. Impulses are the real 
destiny — men follow them as surely as the stars or the planets, 
and it is in this sense that what is to be is. 

As garment draws the garment's hem, 
Men their fortunes bring with them.* 

From lowest to highest all are attached by that which has 
the attractive relation. Matter draws matter. The magnet 
has no attraction for gold or copper, but how it clings to the 
iron ! Man has various attractions — gold, honour, love. To 
know what ideas are common to men is to know humanity — 
to know how they gained is to know how to govern men by 
speech or pen. 

Every man, said Pitt, has his price. Whether Pitt had 
sounded the venality of all patriotism I know not. Of course 
he had fixed the market price of his own virtue. But with 
more truth and less offensiveness it may be said, that every 
man has his reason, which, when once presented to him, 
will sway him : and to find this out is the problem rhetoric 
has to solve. I am not more favourable than Hood to the 
plan of dropping truth gently, as if it were China, and likely 
to break. But if a fair case be so stated as not to mortify 
others by assumed arrogance, as not to annoy by ceaseless im- 
portunity, as not to disgust by seeming vanity, but accompanied 
by evident indications of disinterested sincerity, it will nearly 
always prove acceptable. It is not the truth men hate, but 



24 Public Speaking and Debate. 

the unwise and untutored auxiliaries which so often attend its 
enunciation. " He who would correct my false view of facts," 
said one who understood the despotism of a wise method, "he 
must hold up the same facts in the true order of thought, and I 
can never go back. A man who thinks in the same direction as 
myself, but sees further, who has tastes like mine, but greater 
power, will rule me any day, and make me love my ruler."* 

The young orator will do well to notice that morality is 
better understood, at least in theory, than in former periods of 
our history, and that the public require sincerity on the part of a 
speaker ; and a life which shall illustrate what the orator seeks 
to enforce, will add materially to his influence. The reader 
may ask — May not a recommendation be a good one though 
the giver of it be bad ? This is not the question. Is it not 
an advantage when both are worthy ? The public may accept 
good advice from men who will not take it themselves. But is 
it not the object of a wise Rhetoric to increase the number 
of men who will take sound advice ? If the public should be 
composed of men who hear only and never practice, who does 
not see that we may give over all exhortations of amendment. 
Mankind reason that that which, is good for the public is 
good for individuals, since individuals make up the public. 
And when it is seen that a man does not follow his own 
advice, it is concluded that either he is a simpleton, and 
consequently is not to be heeded, or that he is secretly con- 
scious of some inapplicability in his own recommendations, 
and consequently is to be suspected. 

The moral existence of men is made up of a few trains of 
thought, which, from the cradle to the grave, are excited and 
re-excited, again and again, at the suggestion of sensitive im- 
pressions. These leading ideas rule despotically over conduct, 
and whoever awakens these associations governs those whom 
he addresses. It is in the appeals to these ancient impressions 



Theory of Persuasion. 25 

that we recognise the power and genius of the poet. It is in 
these leading ideas that we see the source of character. These 
are the great features in the lives of men which the rhetorician 
studies. His knowledge of them constitutes the weapons 
with which he works. When ^Napoleon in Egypt was threat- 
ened by his disaffected generals he vanquished them by an 
appeal to the three leading traits in their character — their 
pride, their honour, and their bravery. Walking coolly among 
them, he said, " Soldiers, you are Frenchmen ! You are too 
many to assassinate, and too few to intimidate me." The 
rebellion was blown aside with the breath of these words. 
The fury of the men was subdued to admiration, and they 
turned away, exclaiming, " Damn him, how brave he is." 
Truly is it said the heart has no avenue so open as that 
of flattery ; which, like some enchantment, lays its guards 



A groundless outcry has been raised against speakers who 
appeal to the feelings. The only question to be decided is — 
What are the proper feelings of men ? To appeal to these must 
always be right. The conclusions arrived at through the 
medium of such feelings are as legitimate as conclusions arrived 
at by appeals wholly belonging to the understanding. Feel- 
ings are the stays of intellect — the first links in the chain of 
powerful argument. The appeal to reality is the foundation 
of conviction. The lion was not to be subdued by pictures of 
Hercules and Theseus — he wanted the fact of his superior 
strength displayed. It was necessary that Hercules and The- 
seus should appear. 

In nine years' experience in the office of a public tutor in 
one of the Universities, Paley found, in discoursing to young 
persons upon topics of morality, that unless the subject was 
so drawn up to a point as to exhibit the full force of an objec- 
tion, or the exact place of a doubt, before any explanation 
was entered upon — in other words, unless some curiosity was 
excited before it was attempted to be satisfied — the labour of 



26 Public Speaking and Debate. 

the teacher was lost. "When information was not desired, it 
was seldom, he found, retained. 

The art of education consists in finding out what the child 
or adult wants to know. Inspired with desire to know, he is 
inspired with power to learn, and excited aptitude is the happy 
moment of acquirement. This neglected progress is arrested. 
This fact explains the failure of half the orations and lectures 
of these days. An audience is an adult school. It has, in the 
short space of an hour, to be educated in a new purpose. The 
undertaking is presumptuous, and is only to be accomplished 
by the union of rare judgment, disciplined powers, a store of 
means, and unfaltering energy. Yet how many rush into the 
arena of oratory without forethought, and go home, wondering 
why they failed, and blaming the apathy of the people. Hu- 
manity is an instrument not to be played upon by unskilful 
performers. Had we men who studied oratory as great artists 
do music, painting, and sculpture, the majesty of ancient 
eloquence would yet flourish among us. 

We can do without any article of luxury we never had, 
but when once obtained it is not in human nature to surrender 
it voluntarily. Of twelve thousand clocks left by Sam Slick, 
only ten were returned. " We trust to soft sawder,' 7 said Sam, 
" to get them into the house, and to human nature that they 
never come out of it." Yet how many persons expect to pro- 
duce effects upon assemblies of men who never bestow half 
the time upon the study of their natures as was given by our 
American clock-seller ! 

The wise persuader will therefore treasure up all striking 
facts connected with the influencement of character, adapting, 
with rigid justice, the motive to the condition — to the great 
occasion, the strong inducement. Then to borrow the words 
of Hazlitt : — " The orator is only concerned to give a tone of 
masculine firmness to the will, to brace the sinews' and muscles 
of the mind : not to delight our nervous sensibilities, or soften 
the mind into voluptuous indolence. The flowery and senti- 



Method. 21 

mental style is, of all others, the most intolerable in a speaker. 
He must be confident, inflexible, uncontrollable, overcoming 
all opposition by his ardour and impetuosity. We do not 
command others by sympathy with them, but by power, by 
passion, by will." On other occasions the orator is not reluc- 
tant to remember that the words of sincerity and kindness 
never fail when addressed to people not stirred by passion or 
rendered sullen by real or fancied contempt. Then the iron 
argument and the imperious air give place to the happier 
philosophy sung by Darwin, which teaches — 

How Love and Sympathy, with potent charm, 
Warm the cold heart — the lifted hand disarm; 
Allure with pleasures, and alarm with pains, 
And bind society in golden chains. 



CHAPTER IV. 



The art of persuasion is dependent on no one thing so much 
as Method. To have the fact, and to know how to tell it, is to 
hold rhetorical success in our hands. But it is of no use to 
have the fact unless we know how to tell it, and it is this 
which Method teaches. There is, said the " Quarterly Re- 
view" lately, no power over human affairs like the right word 
spoken at the right season. 

Method is derived from a Greek word, signifying a path, a 
way, or transit. Where there are many transits, step follows 
step in pursuit of an object. And as there must be, for a true 
pursuit, a definite object in view, the principle of unity is im- 
plied in that of progression. Hence in a true method there 
must be a definite pursuit, otherwise circumstances will create 
sensations ; but there will be no thought without method, and 
there may be restless and incessant activity, but without 



28 Public Speaking and Debate. 

method there will be no progress. When the mind becomes 
accustomed to the outward impressions of objects, it turns to 
their relations, which hence become its prime pursuit, and may 
be called the materials of method. 

The kinds of relations are two, the one arising from that 
which must be, the other that by which we merely perceive 
that it is. The former is called law, in its original accepta- 
tion, laying down the rule — the other is called the relation of 
theory.* 

This is the method .of science— it applies to the order pur- 
sued in the arrangement of encyclopaedias. The method of art, 
if not so rigid, is yet regular, and marks both performances 
and character. 

Coleridge asks, "What is it that first strikes us, and strikes 
us at once, in a man of education, and which, among educated 
men, so instantly distinguishes the man of superior mind ? 
Not always the weight or novelty of his remarks, nor always 
the interest of the facts which he communicates — for the 
subject of conversation may chance to be trivial, and its dura- 
tion to be short. Still less can any just admiration arise from 
any peculiarity in his words and phrases, for every man of 
practical good sense will follow, as far as the matters under 
consideration will permit him, that golden rule of Caesar's — 
In sole ns verbum, tan qua m scopidum, evitare. The true cause 
of the impression made on us is, that his mind is methodical. 
We perceive this, in the unpremeditated, and evidently habitual 
arrangement of his words, flowing spontaneously and necessa- 
rily from the clearness of the leading idea, from which distinct- 
ness of mental vision, when men are fully accustomed to it, 
they obtain a habit of foreseeing at the beginning of every 
sentence how it is to end, and how all its parts may be brought 
out in the best and most orderly succession. However irreg- 
ular and desultory the conversation may happen to be, there 

* See Encyclopaedia Metropolitana, Art. " Method." 



Method. 29 

is Method in the fragments."* The illustration of this is 
easy. 

Two persons of opposite opinions will often meet — the one 
to convert the other. For instance : A seeks to bring B to 
the adoption of his opinions. I have witnessed the experiment 
often. The general course of procedure is this. A commences 
to unfold, expatiate on, and enforce his views. He expects 
thus to win B to their entertainment. But the mistake is a 
grave one. A argues at B when he should reason with him. 
A thus stands on the platform of his opinions and preaches to 
B, who is perched upon a platform of his own. A thus expects 
B to come to him. B probably expects the same of A. Thus 
both expect what neither intends. 

A, in expecting B to come to him, assumes that on the 
part of his opponent there exists a predisposition for his views. 
This should never be assumed. It is the first endeavour of a 
wise propagandist to create it if it does not exist, and strengthen 
it if it does — and whether it exists or not he should always 
condescend as though it did not. The business of A, the con- 
verter, is to go down to the platform B stands upon, to inquire 
his principles, study his views and turn of thought until he 
finds some common ground of faith, morals, opinion, or practice, 
with which he can identify himself. The propagandist should 
commence by playing the pathfinder. The business of A is to 
find a path from B's platform to his own down which B can 
agreeably walk. When a common ground is found, A argues 
on that to B. The narrow spot of identity soon enlarges if A 
has truth on his side, for all truth, like electricity, has a ten- 
dency to pass into all bodies uncharged with it, until an equi- 
librium of light is established, and the current is universal. 

A, in finding a common ground in B's intellectual sphere, 
establishes an equality with B. This gives A an advantage. 
By studying B's views, instead of making B study his, he con- 

* Encyclopaedia Metropolitans. 



30 Public Speaking and Debate. 

descends to B — he thus establishes fraternity. This predisposes 
B to good will. 

Equality and fraternity are the two inlets to the under- 
standing. Conversion is uniformity. It ends in intellectual 
equality. It must begin so. The pleasure of universal opinion 
is the harmony it creates — the propagandists commence in 
fraternity, that being the auspicious harbinger of harmony. 

It is of no use saying you cannot find a common ground. 
He who cannot find it, cannot convert. How can persons, 
any more than bodies, cohere, who never touch ? So long as 
each denies to the other a particle of reason on his side — so 
long as each maintains an infallibility of pretension to complete 
truth — they both assume what is contrary to the nature of 
things, and exclude the common ground which must be estab- 
lished between them — where truth and error can join issue. 
There is no impassable gulf between contending men or con- 
tending opinions, but that dug by pride and passion. We all 
have a common starting-point. We have a common conscious- 
ness of impression — a common nature to investigate — a 
common sincerity actuates us — truth is our common object, 
and we have a common interest in discovering it. Nature 
made us friends : it is false pride that makes us enemies. A 
common ground exists between all disputants. This is an 
important fact too little attended to, or indeed too little under- 
stood by inexperienced thinkers. The common ground which 
exists is not one which policy makes, but one that nature 
provides. 

These remarks make conviction to depend upon truth, not 
upon forms of procedure. Nothing is recommended here 
which is inconsistent with truth — no cunning questioning, no 
sophistical entrapment. The sole precepts are those of conde- 
scension and contrast. Find a common ground of agreement, 
and you find a common point of sight, from which all objects 
are seen in the same light ; and a clear plane is obtained on 
which principles can be drawn, and a perfect contrast of truth 



Method. 31 

and error displayed. He who has the truth will make it 
plainer by wisdom of procedure. Differences are often made 
wider by irrelevant, repulsive debate. Differences which did 
not exist are often created in this way. All men desire the 
truth, and there is a way in which all can find it. The under- 
standings of men run in a given channel — each thinker looks 
as it were through a telescope of his own. Let A bring his 
views within the vision of B, and the chances are in favour of 
B seeing the truth, if truth there be. If he sees error, A is 
benefitted by the discovery made by a clearer sight than his 
own. "The faculty of speech," says Quinctilian, "we derive 
from nature — but the art from observation. For as in physic, 
men, by seeing that some things promote health and others 
destroy it, formed the art upon those observations ; in like 
manner, by perceiving that some things in discourse are said 
to advantage and others not, they accordingly marked those 
things in order to imitate the one and avoid the other." 

It is a maxim of the schoolmen, " contrariorum eadem 
est scientia," we never really know what a thing is, unless 
we are also able to give a sufficient account of its opposite. 
This is the maxim of contrast that enters into all effective 
persuasion. 

Various rules are given to direct the treatment of Regular 
Subjects. We are to begin, says Walker, with — 1. Definition, 
2. Cause. 3. Antiquity or Novelty, 4. Universality or Locality, 
5. Advantages or Disadvantages. 

A Theme, which is proving some truth, is said to have 
these parts — 1. The Proposition or meaning of the theme, 2. 
The Reason in favour of it, 3. The Confirmation or display of 
the unreasonableness of the contrary opinion, 4. The Simile or 
illustration, 5. Example from history, 6. Testimony of others, 
7. Conclusion or summary. 

Writers are not all agreed in determining the parts of an 
oration, though the difference is rather in the manner of con- 
sidering them than in the things themselves. Cicero mentions 



32 Public Speaking and Debate. 

six, viz., Introduction, Narration, Proposition, Confirmation, 
Confutation, and Conclusion. 

Writers are not agreed upon the division of orations, 
because nature has not agreed. All subjects* will not admit 
of being treated under so many heads, and some audiences 
will not admit of the formality. Sometimes an exordium is a 
bore, and a peroration tedious. Tact retrenches method as 
circumstances dictate. Paley's custom was to break down a 
subject into as many distinct parts as it really appeared to 
contain, and make each of them the subject of a separate and 
rigorous investigation. This seems a wise rule : we then take 
such parts as the subject affords, in the order prescribed, 
abbreviating them as the knowledge or temper of the audience 
may require. 

The facts of necessity and discretion premised, the most 
practical formula of general procedure seems to me to be, — 1. 
Give the Introduction. 2. Explain the terms of the proposi- 
tion, show what is granted and what disputed on each side, 
and then state the point of controversy. 3. Examine objec- 
tions, and establish your own proposition. 4. Refute objec- 
tions, and expose fallacies. 5. Make observations of enforce- 
ment naturally suggested by the subject : — 

These rules of old discover'd, Dot devised, 
Are Nature still, but Nature methodised. 

It is our opinion, says one of our critical journals, that all 
things should be made known in their proper places. ]So 
knowledge can be complete or thoroughly wholesome which is 
partial. 

Dr. Paley has furnished two observations which may be 
usefully borne in mind in the enforcement of topics. 

1. In all cases, where the mind feels itself in danger of 
being confounded by variety, it is safe to rest upon a few 
strong points, or perhaps upon a single instance. Amongst a 
multitude of proofs, it is one that does the business. 



Method. 33 

2. A just reasoner removes from his consideration, not only 
what he knows, but what he does not know, touching matters 
not strictly connected with his argument, i. e., not forming the 
very steps of his deduction : beyond these his knowledge and 
his ignorance are alike relative. 

The simplicity and wisdom of profound method has been 
illustrated in the works of Morelly. Yillegardelle says of 
Morelly's Essays on the Human Mind, treating on the analysis 
of the intellectual faculties, published in 1743 : — "The sub- 
stance of this small educational treatise, which contains the 
developed germ of the method of instruction to which Mr. 
Jacotot has given his name, is comprised in the two following 
propositions : — 

" 1. The inclinations of the mind are reducible to two, viz., 
Desire to know and Love of order — to these two ends we 
must refer all, even the amusements of children. 

"2. It is sufficient to present to the soul [understanding?] 
objects in the same order as it generally follows, without 
making it perceive that it must attend to them." 

The first essential of any kind of greatness is that it should 
have a purpose. We do not suspect the presence of genius 
till we feel this manifest. The Duke of Wellington has few 
arts which win applause. He is illiterate. All the school- 
boys in the kingdom laughed at his letters. Instead of the 
refinement of the classic council-table, his "Despatches" are 
as coarse as fish-market bulletins — yet has he achieved greatness 
of a certain kind, because he has decision of character. 

One of his biographers — I think it is the Rev. Mr. Wright 
— has given us the key to the Duke's success in a few thought- 
ful words — "One characteristic of the Duke of Welling- 
ton strikes the reader from the very first, even when but a 
novice in war or statesmanship — his resolute will and un- 
bounded self-reliance. Confident in his own capacity, he 
thinks, decides, and acts while other men are hesitating and 
asking advice. He is evidently conscious that decision and 
2* 



34 Public Speaking and Debate, 

promptitude, even though sometimes a man may err for want 
of due deliberation, will, in the long run, more often conduct 
to success than a slow judgment, that comes too late."" This is 
the secret. The capacity to see this truth and the resolution 
to act upon it, is the capacity to rise above common men. 
Innumerable people will strike out a course and pursue it — 
while all goes well — but the temper of greatness ever remains 
unshaken by reverses. It places its life on the hazard of a 
well-chosen plan, and looks for failures and defeats, but relies 
on the " long run" of persistency for success. 

The intellectual character of the Duke of Wellington, so far 
as it has been displayed in civil affairs, accords with what his 
military exploits indicates. A simple and brief directness 
are the qualities of his speeches. " He strips a subject of 
all extraneous and unnecessary adjuncts, and exposes it in its 
natural proportions. He scents a fallacy afar off, and hunts 
it down at once without mercy. He has certain constitutional 
principles which are to him real standards. He measures 
propositions or opinions by these standards, and as they come 
up or fall short, so they are accepted or disposed of." The 
Duke of Wellington early took sides — lie learned well the prin- 
ciples of which he would become the partisan. I have italicised 
the words in the sentence just quoted from " Fraser," which 
indicates his intellectual habit. It is hard to tell, generally, 
what are the "constitutional principles" of British liberty. 
But it is not hard to tell what they are when you know who 
uses the phrase. The principles of the Throne and Court may 
be expressed in three propositions. The Duke having adopted 
these, sits at ease, and measures the plausible speeches of 
progress by them, and unmasks the sophism of the quasi- 
liberal. 

But, however directed, men will ever respect straightfor- 
wardness of character. It is heroic in that man, whoever he 
may be, who looks over the troubled sea of time, and manfully 
elects his course. 



Method. 35 

Stern is the cm-look of Necessity : 

Not without shudder may a human hand 

Grasp the mysterious urn of destiny. 

There is heroism in the very act — which cannot be too much 
applauded. It is this which converts life from being a phantom 
or a manoeuvre into a reality and a process. It throws into 
ignoble shade your petty men of expedients. Principle either 
gives success or confers dignity — by chicanery all may be lost, 
and nothing noble can ever be gained. By manoeuvre weak 
men seek to cheat human nature, cajole fate, and win a 
glorious destiny by paltry tricks. But the whole order of 
things is against it. Such a course may triumph, but it is the 
triumph of luck — not success. It is accident — not merit. 
Dignity is alone bom of principle and purpose. 

He who by principle is swayed 

In truth and justice still the same, 
Is neither of the crowd afraid, 

Tho' civil broils the state inflame, 
Nor to a haughty tyranfs frown will stoop, 
Nor to a raging storm when all the winds are up.* 

What decision is to character, what principle is to morals 
— so is method to literature. To have a clear purpose, and 
vigorously pursue it, is the strong element of rhetorical success. 
It is this feature which leads to the delineation of individual 
character. Coleridge has shown that the character of Hamlet 
is decided by the constant recurrence, in the midst of every 
pursuit, of philosophic reflections. Mrs. Quickly's talk is 
marked by that lively incoherence so common with garrulous 
women, whereby the last idea suggests the successor, each 
carrying the speaker further from the original subject. After 
this manner : — " Speaking of tails — we always like those that 
end well — Hogg's, for instance — speaking of hogs — we saw 
one of these animals the other day lying in the gutter, and in 
the opposite one a well-dressed man ; the first had a ring in 

* Horace, Ode 3, Lib. III. 



36 Public Speaking and Debate. 

his nose, the latter had a ring on his finger. The man was 
drunk, the hog was sober. A man is known by the company 
he keeps/' &c. As Dr. Cains clips English, some of Bulwer's 
characters amplify periods. Dominie Sampson exclaims, 
"Prodigious." Sam Weller talks slang. In other cases an 
overwhelming passion pervades a character, or an intellectual 
idiosyncrasy is the peculiar quality, leading the possessor to 
look at everything in a given light. But whatever may be 
the feature fixed upon, its methodical working out constitutes 
individuality of character. 

In the courts young barristers are drilled in an iron 
method. A judge always expects, at the outset, the enuncia- 
tion of the object of the speech. A judicious speaker will 
always observe this rule for the sake of his audience. As a 
system of reasoning proceeds from certain axioms which can 
never be lost sight of except at the peril of confusion, so a 
discourse proceeds on something which is taken for granted, 
and which must be confessed and explained at the beginning, 
or the speaker will be considered only as indulging in airy 
speculations, and his hearers will be bewildered instead of 
enlightened, and be anxious about the danger of a fall instead 
of intent on the scene placed before them. The advantages 
of the course here advised have been well enforced in the 
Encyclopaedia Metropolitana. " In purely argumentative 
statement, or in the argumentative division of mixed state- 
ments, and especially in argumentative speeches, it is essential 
that the issue to be proved should be distinctly announced in 
the beginning in order that the tenour and drift that way of 
everything that is said may be the better apprehended ; and 
it is also useful when the chain of argument is long, to give a 
forecast of the principal bearings and junctures whereby the 
attention will be more easily secured, and pertinently directed 
throughout the more closely consecutive detail, and each pro- 
position of the series will be clenched in the memory by its 
foreknown relevancy to what is to follow." These are well- 



Method. 3t 

known rules which it were superfluous to cite except for the 
instruction of the young. But examples may be occasionally 
observed of juvenile orators who will conceal the end they 
aim at, until they have led their hearers through the long 
chain of antecedents in order that they may produce surprise 
by forcing a sudden acknowledgment of what had not been 
foreseen. The disadvantage of this method is that it puzzles 
and provokes the hearer through the sequence, and confounds 
him in the conclusion ; and gives an overcharged impression 
of the orator's ingenuity on the part of those who may have 
attended to him sufficiently to have been convinced. It is a 
method by which the business of the argument is sacrificed to 
a puerile ostentation in the conduct of it, and the ease and 
satisfaction of the auditors sacrificed to the vanity of the 
arguer. 

But though the purport of a speech must be avowed, the 
drift of an illustration may be concealed. One of Mr. Fox's 
Covent Garden orations affords a brilliant example. He took 
the case of certain poachers who had, about that time, suffered 
imprisonment in Ashby-de-la-Zouch, and he calculated the days 
of their incarceration, and the pecuniary loss their families had 
sustained by their detention from labour. The statistics were 
dry as summer's dust. What this had to do with the question 
of the corn laws no one could divine — when, by a masterly 
turn of thought, he asked — " If poachers are so punished who 
take the rich man's bird, how ought peers to be punished who 
take the poor man's bread ?" The house rose with surprise. 
The climax had the effect of a light applied to a funeral pile, 
in which the arguments of the protectionists were to be con- 
sumed before the meeting. 

Method is often of moment in trivial things. Some years 
ago it was the custom in Glasgow, when a fire broke out in 
the evening, for the police to enter the theatre and announce 
the fire and the locality, that if any person concerned was 
present he might be apprised of the impending loss. On one 



38 Public Speaking and Debate. 

occasion when the watch commenced to announce " Fire — 45 
Candieriggs," the audience took alarm at the word Eire, and 
concluded that it applied to the theatre. A rush ensued which 
prevented the full notice being heard, and several persons lost 
their lives. The inversion of the order of announcement, " 45 
Candleriggs — Fire," would have prevented the disaster. But 
afterwards the practice of such announcements was forbidden, 
it being impossible, I suppose, to reform the rhetoric of 
policemen. 

Of the effect of the want of method in neutralising the most 
magnificent powers, Burke is a remarkable instance. As an 
orator, Burke dazzled his hearers, then distracted them, and 
finished by fatiguing or offending them. And it was not 
uncouth elocution and exterior only, which impaired the 
efficacy of his speeches. Burke almost always deserted his 
subject, before he was abandoned by his audience. In the 
progress of a long discourse he was never satisfied with prov- 
ing that which was principally in question, or with enforcing 
the single measure which it was his business and avowed pur- 
pose to enforce, — he diverged to a thousand collateral topics, 
■ — he demonstrated as many disputed propositions, — he estab- 
lished principles^ in all directions, — he illuminated the whole 
horizon with his magnificent, but scattered lights. There was, 
nevertheless, no keeping in his spoken compositions, — no pro- 
portion, — no subserviency of inferior groups to greater, — no 
apparent harmony or unity of purpose. He forgot that there 
was but a single point to prove, and his auditors in their turn 
forgot that they had undergone the process of conviction 
upon any. 

When Fadladeen essays his critical opinion on the poem of 
Feramorz, he commences thus : — ■" In order to convey with 
clearness my opinion of the story this young man has related, 
it is necessary to take a review of all the stories that have 
eyer » " My good Fadladeen!" exclaimed Lalla Rookh, in- 
terrupting him, " we really do not deserve that you should 



Method. 39 

give yourself so much trouble. Your opinion of the poem we 
have just heard will, no doubt, be abundantly edifying, with- 
out further waste of your valuable erudition." " If that be 
all," replied the critic — evidently mortified at not being allowed 
to show how much he knew about every thing but the subject 
immediately before him — " if that be all that is required, the 
matter is easily despatched." He then proceeded to analyse 
the poem. The wit of Moore was never more happily expended 
than in satirising this learned discursiveness. The race of 
Fadlacleen is immortal. 

A few years ago a distinguished clergyman of the TTniver- 
salist denomination was accused, while in Lowell, of " vio- 
lently dragging his wife from a revival meeting, -and compelling 
her to go home with him." He replied, " Firstly, I have never 
attempted to influence my wife in her views, nor her choice of 
a meeting. Secondly, my wife has not attended any of the 
revival meetings in Lowell. Thirdly, I have not attended even 
one of those meetings for auy purpose whatever. Fourthly, 
neither my wife nor myself has any inclination to attend those 
meetings. And, fifthly, I never had a wife !" This divine 
must have had " Order" large. 

Next to those who talk as though they would never come 
to the point, are a class of bores who talk as though they did 
not know what the point was. Before they have proceeded 
far in telling a story, they stumble upon some Mr. TVhat's-his- 
name, whom they have forgotten, and, though it does not mat- 
ter whether he had a name or not, the narrative is made to 
stand still until they have gone through the tiresome and 
fruitless task of trying to remember it — in which they never 
succeed. 

A gorgeous instance of method occurs in TV. J. Fox's Ser- 
mon on Human Brotherhood,* in which polished taste has so 
adjusted each clause that they reach a climax worthy of that 
Grecian art which the passage celebrates. 

* Sermons on Christian Morality. 



40 Public Speaking and Debate. 

" From the dawn of intellect and freedom Greece has been 
a watchword on the earth. There rose the social spirit to soften 
and refine her chosen race, and shelter, as in a nest, her gen- 
tleness from the rushing storm of barbarism — there liberty 
first built her mountain throne, first called the waves her own, 
and shouted across them a proud defiance to despotism's banded 
myriads ; there the arts and graces danced around humanity, 
and stored man's home with comforts, and strewed his path 
with roses, and bound his brows with myrtle, and fashioned for 
him the breathing statue, and summoned him to temples of 
snowy marble, and charmed his senses with all forms of elo- 
quence, and threw over his final sleep their veil of loveliness; 
there sprung poetry, like their own fabled goddess, mature at 
once from the teeming intellect, gilt with the arts and armour 
that defy the assaults of time, and subdue the heart of man ; 
there matchless orators gave the world a model of perfect elo- 
quence, the soul the instrument on which they played, and 
every passion of our nature but a tone which the master's 
touch called forth at will ; there lived and taught the philoso- 
phers of bower and porch, of pride and pleasure, of deep specu- 
lation and of useful action, who developed all the acuteness, and 
refinement, and excursiveness, and energy of mind, and were 
the glory of their country, when their country was the glory 
of the earth." 



CHAPTER Y. 

DISCIPLINE. 

Since custom, says the wise Bacon, is the principal magis- 
trate of a man's life, let him, by all means, endeavour to obtain 
good customs. Digressiveness is the natural state of the 
human faculties, till custom or habit comes in to give them a 
settled direction. Man is as liable to be influenced by the last 



Discipline. 41 

impression as by any preceding one ; and the liability of man 
is the characteristic of children. The teacher knows this, for 
it is only by infinite diversion that children can be instructed 
for hours together, or governed without coercion. It is the 
object of discipline to check the tendency to diversion, and 
give stability to method. A man may be made to perceive 
method, but not to follow it without the power of discipline. 
A child accustomed to it will go to bed in the dark with peace 
and pleasure, but all the rhetoric in the world would not 
accomplish the same end without habit. Nothing but habit 
will give the power of habit. 

When Malibran was introduced to Rossini, as a girl of 
fourteen, by her father, Garcia, having sung a cavatina, the 
grand maestro said, " Practise, Mademoiselle, and you must 
inevitably rise to the highest point of your profession." 

Mr. John Foster, in his prospectus of his ruled copy-books, 
remarks that " The grand secret in teaching writing is to 
bestow much attention upon a little variety. The necessity 
of a continued repetition of the same exercise till it can be 
executed with correctness, cannot be too strongly insisted on. 
But, as this reiteration is tedious for an age so fond of novelty 
as that of childhood, we should keep as close to the maxim as 
possible, and, by a judicious intermixture of a few slightly 
differing forms, contrive to fix attention, and to ensure repeti- 
tion. ' The method of teaching anything to children/ says 
Locke, 'is by repeated practice, and the same action done 
over and over again, until they have got the habit of doing it 
well ; a method that has so many advantages, whichever way 
we come to consider it, that I wonder how it could possibly be 
so much neglected.' Again : ' Children should never be set 
to perfect themselves in two parts of an action at the same 
time.' We have here the highest authority insisting on the 
very points which we labour to enforce, viz : — 1. That it is 
only by constant reiteration, and persevering, pains-taking 
efforts, that ease and correctness in penmanship can be attained. 



42 Public Speaking a x d Debate. 

2. That the pupil should not advance too hastily, but proceed 
by natural gradations, from the simplest to the more difficult 
combinations." This discipline of penmanship may stand, also, 
for the discipline of elocution, for men are as children on the 
verge of a new art. 

A speaker, like an actor, is subjected to the criticism of a 
casual hearing. The auditor who hears you but once will form 
an opinion of you for ever. Against this injustice of judgment 
there is no protection but in acquiring such a mastery over 
your powers as to be able always to exert them well — to strike, 
astonish, or impress, in some respect or other, at every appear- 
ance. A man, therefore, who has a reputation to acquire or 
preserve will keep silence whenever he is in any danger of 
speaking indifferently. He will practice so often in private, 
and train himself so perseveringly, that perfection will become 
a second nature, and the power of proficiency never desert 
him. The uninitiated, who think genius is an impulsive effort 
that costs nothing, little dream with what patience the profes- 
sional singer or actor observes regular habits and judicious ex- 
ercise — how they treasure all their strength and power for the 
hour of appearance. 

From Demosthenes to Curran, the personnel of orators has 
illustrated the triumphs of application as much as the triumphs 
of genius. " One day, an acquaintance, in speaking of Cur- 
ran's eloquence, happened to observe that it must have been 
born with him. ' Indeed, my dear sir/ replied Curran, ' it 
was not ; it was born three and twenty years and some months 
after me ; and, if you are satisfied to listen to a dull historian, 
you shall have the history of its nativity. When I was at the 
Temple, a few of us formed a little debating club. Upon the 
first night of meeting I attended, my foolish heart throbbing 
with the anticipated honour of being styled " the learned mem- 
ber that opened the debate," or "the very eloquent gentleman 
who has just sat down." I stood up — the question was the Cath- 
olic claims or the slave trade, I protest I now forget which, but 



Discipline. 43 

the difference, you know, was never very obvious — my mind 
was stored with about a folio volume of matter, but I wanted 
a preface, and for want of a preface the volume was never pub- 
lished. I stood up, trembling through every fibre ; but, re- 
membering, that in this I was but imitating Tully, I took 
courage, aud had actually proceeded almost as far as "Mr. 
Chairman," when, to my astonishment and terror, I perceived 
that every eye was turned upon me. There were only six or 
seven present, and the room could not have contained as many 
more ; yet was it, to my panic-struck imagination, as if I were 
the central object in nature, and assembled millions were gaz- 
ing upon me in breathless expectation. I became dismayed 
and dumb. My friends cried " Hear him I" but there was noth- 
ing to hear. My lips, indeed, went through the pantomime 
of articulation, but I was like the unfortunate fiddler at the 
fair, who, upon coming to strike up the solo that was to ravish 
every ear, discovered that an enemy had maliciously soaped 
his bow. So you see, sir, it was not born with me. How- 
ever, though my friends despaired of me, the cacoethes loquendl 
was not to be subdued without a struggle. I was for the pres- 
ent silenced, but I still attended our meetings with the most 
laudable regularity, and even ventured to accompany the others 
to a more ambitious theatre, the club of Temple Bar. One 
of them was upon his legs ; a fellow of whom it was difficult 
to decide whether he was most distinguished for the filth of 
his person or the flippancy of his tongue — -just such another 
as Harry Flood would have called " the highly gifted gentle- 
man with the dirty cravat and greasy pantaloons." I found 
this learned personage in the act of calumniating chronology 
by the most preposterous anachronisms. He descanted upon 
Demosthenes, the glory of the Roman forum — spoke of Tully 
as the famous contemporary and rival of Cicero — and, in the 
short space of one half hour, transported the straits of Mara- 
thon three several times to the plains of Thermopyla?. Think- 
ing that I had a right to know something of these matters, I 



44 Public Speaking and Debate. 

looked at him with surprise. When our eyes met, there was 
something like a wager of battle in mine ; upon which the eru- 
dite gentleman instantly changed his invective against antiquity 
into an invective against me, and concluded by a few words 
of friendly counsel (horresco referens) to " orator mum," who, 
he doubted not, possessed wonderful talents for eloquence, al- 
though he would recommend him to show it in future by some 
more popular method than his silence. I followed his advice, 
and, I believe, not entirely without effect. So, sir, you see 
that to try the bird the spur must touch his blood/ 

" The discovery, on this occasion, of his talents for public 
speaking, encouraged him to proceed in his studies with addi- 
tional energy and vigour. The defect in his enunciation (at 
school he went by the cognomen of ' Stuttering Jack Curran') 
he corrected by a regular system of daily reading aloud, slowly, 
and with strict regard to pronunciation, passages from his 
favourite authors. His person was short, and his appearance 
ungraceful and without dignity. To overcome these disadvan- 
tages, he recited and studied his postures before a mirror, and 
adopted a method of gesticulation suited to his appearance. 
Besides a constant attendance at the debating clubs, he accus- 
tomed himself to extemporaneous eloquence in private, by pro- 
posing cases to himself, which he debated with the same care 
as if he had been addressing a jury."* 

Mr. Macready, in the level part of the character of 
Mordaunt, in the Steward, and in some others, has been saidf 
to exhibit that very rare acquirement, a perfectly unconstrained 
and graceful style of expression, accompanied by a cool, quiet, 
and unconscious self-possession, in which the manners of a 
gentleman consist. This bearing, so indispensable in the 
speaker, is rarely to be acquired except by intercourse with 
good society. No closet theory will impart it so surely as the 
discipline of communication. 

* Hogg's Weekly Instructor. t Blackwood, 1819. 



Tact. 45 

Men of brilliant rather than solid powers dazzle them- 
selves and others with isolated thoughts, too little caring for 
coherency. In this way Hazlitt has told ns that " An improv- 
ing actor, artist, or poet, never becomes a great one. A man 
of genius rises and passes by these risers. A volcano does not 
give warning when it will break out, nor a thunderbolt send 
word of its approach." To this it is sufficient to reply, that 
the volcano is not the production of a moment, nor is the 
thunderbolt. The occasion of the display is sudden, but the 
collection of power, natural or human, is of slow growth. 



CHAPTER VI. 



In matters not absolutely scientific, the principles of Method 
are more arbitrary, and dependent upon the circumstances in 
which a speaker finds himself placed. We may abandon the 
order of nature, and follow that of the understanding, where 
conviction can be more readily effected. This is the province of 
Tact. Method is straightforward procedure — Tact is adapta- 
tion. Method applies to general, Tact to special, occasions. 

The distinction between Method and Tact is illustrated in 
the following practical remarks of Paley : — " For the purpose 
of addressing different understandings and different apprehen- 
sions — for the purpose of sentiment — for the purpose of excit- 
ing admiration of our subject — we diversify our views, we 
multiply examples. [ This is Tact.] But for the purpose of 
strict argument one clear instance is sufficient ; and not only 
sufficient, but capable, perhaps, of generating a firmer assu- 
rance than what can arise from a divided attention." [This is 
Method.] 

When an opponent urges an objection, one way of reply- 



46 Public Speaking and Debate. 

ing to it is by endeavouring to prove that the assertion con- 
tained in the objection is not true. Another alternative, of 
which we may sometimes avail ourselves, is that, if even the 
assertion be true, it is no objection to our position. 

It sometimes happens that the argument advanced against 
us is really an argument in our favour. Tact discovers and 
avails itself of these advantages. Method arranges the mate- 
rials, Tact applies the resources, of reasoning. 

It is the judicious application of means that constitutes 
Tact. In journalism Tact is an indispensable requisite. The 
history of Mr. Murray's daily paper, the "Representative," 
published for six or eight months, about twenty years ago, is 
abundant proof that unlimited command of capital, first-rate 
literary abilities in every branch of knowledge, and the 
highest possible patronage, are all insufficient to establish a 
London morning paper without that commodity which alone 
lends practical value to the other three, and which is far more 
difficult to be procured than the three put together. What 
the princely fortune of Mr. Murray, and his intellectual Titans 
of the " Quarterly," and all his regal and legal, and ermined 
and coronetted, and lay and clerical, and civil and military, 
friends could not obtain, was the simple but inestimable gift 
called Tact.* 

Hamilton's Parliamentary Logic abounds in maxims which 
that experienced tactitian had treasured up, observed, or in- 
vented, during his public life. Many of these advices are 
utterly unworthy the imitation of an ingenuous man, but a few 
may be taken as illustrative of tact, good sense, and shrewd- 
ness : — 

State what you censure by the soft names of those who 
would apologise for it. 

In putting a question to your adversary, let it be the last 
thing you say. 

* London Correspondent of the " Birmingham Journal. 1 ' 



Tact. _ 47 

Distinguish real from avowed reasons of a thing. This 
makes a fine and brilliant fund of argument. 

Upon every argument consider the misrepresentations which 
your opponent will probably make of it. 

If your cause is too bad, call in aid the party : if the party 
is bad, call in aid the cause.* 

Nothing disgusts a popular assembly more than being 
apprised of your intentions to speak long. 

To succeed in a new sphere a man must take Tact with him. 
In nine cases out of ten, Method will miss the mark till Tact 
has taught it adaptation. The House of Commons has often 
illustrated this opinion. So many things have to be taken into 
account, that nothing but experience can teach their manage- 
ment. Canning used to say, that speaking in the House of 
Commons must take conversation for its basis ; that a studi- 
ous treatment of topics was out of place. The House of 
Commons is a working body, jealous and suspicious of embel- 
lishments in debate, which, if used at all, ought to be sponta- 
neous and unpremeditated. Method is indispensable. Topics 
ought to be clearly distributed and arranged ; but this ar- 
rangement should be felt in effect, and not betrayed in the 
manner. But above all things, first and last, he maintained 
that reasoning was the one essential element. Oratory in the 
House of Lords was totally different. It was addressed to a 
different atmosphere — a different class of intellects — more ele- 
vated, more conventional. It was necessary to be more am- 
bitious and elaborate there. 

" Fellows who have been the oracles of coteries from their 
birth — who have gone through the regular process of gold 
medals, senior wranglerships, and double foists — who have 
nightly sat clown amid tumultuous cheering in debating societies, 
and can harangue, ipth an unruffled forehead and an unfalter- 



* "If neither is good," adds Hamilton, " wound your opponent," which may be 
parliamentary, hut I do not choose to recommend it 



48 Public Speaking and Debate. 

ing voice, from one end of a dinner table to the other — who, 
on all occasions, have something to say, and can speak with 
fluency on what they know nothing about — no sooner rise in 
the House than their spells desert them. All their effrontery 
vanishes. Commonplace ideas are rendered even more unin- 
teresting by a monotonous delivery ; and, keenly alive as even 
boobies are, in those sacred walls, to the miraculous, no one 
appears more thoroughly aware of his unexpected and astound- 
ing deficiencies than the orator himself. He regains his seat, 
hot and hard, sultry and stiff, with a burning cheek and an 
icy hand — repressing his breath lest it should give evidence of 
an existence of which he is ashamed, and clenching his fist, 
that the pressure may secretly convince him he has not as 
completely annihilated his stupid body as his false reputation."* 

How admirable a compendium is this of the history of rhe- 
torical blockheads, who think that "in the great arena their 
little bow-wow" will be taken for "the loftiest war-note the 
lion can pour," just as if they were in their own small councils, 
and clubs, and societies ! D'Israeli is said to have failed in 
this manner on the Spottiswoode business in the House of 
Commons ; but afterwards, as the world knows, he achieved 
brilliant distinction. Tact alone can teach a man to feel his 
way and measure the men opposed to him — it dictates judgment 
and effort, or silence. 

Reputation and fortune are often made by Tact alone. The 
late Sir William Follett is an example. One of his obituary 
notices said :— We do not, by any means, mean to say that at 
any period of his life he could be compared, as a scientific 
lawyer (to scholarship he had no pretensions at all), to Tindal, 
Maule, Patteson, Campbell ; or, in the equity courts, to Pepys, 
Pemberton, or Sugden. Thus his professional position was 
attributable neither to the superiority of his professional 
knowledge nor to any talent above his contemporaries. In 

* "Young Duke, 1 ' by L^Israeli. 



Tact. 49 

Parliament he was not to be compared with Plunkett, Brough- 
am, Sir William Grant, or Perceval. He possessed not the 
strong, eloquent and condensed power of diction, joined to the 
closest and severest reasoning, of Plunkett ; he had neither 
the stores of political, literary, and economical information, 
the versatility, the power of vigorous invective, nor of sarcasm, 
of Brougham ; the calm, philosophic spirit of generalisation 
of Grant ; nor had he the dauntless daring and parliamentary 
pluck of Perceval. It must be admitted that he was neither 
an orator, nor a man of genius, nor a man of learning, apart 
from the speciality of his profession. He had neither passion, 
nor imagination of the fancy or of the heart. In what, then, 
lay his barristerial superiority ? In his capability to play the 
artful dodge. His greatest skill consisted in presenting his 
case in the most harmonious and fair purposed aspect. If 
there was anything false or fraudulent, a hitch, or a blot of 
any kind in his cause, he kept it dexterously out of view, or 
hurried it trippingly over ; but if the blot was on the other 
side, he had the eye of the lynx and the scent of the hound to 
detect and run down his game. He had the greatest skill in 
reading an affidavit, and could play the "artful dodge" in a 
style looking so like gentlemanly candour, that you could not 
find fault ; and in reading an affidavit on the opposite side, he 
was cunning of fence. 

I do not give this example as imitable, only as illustrative 
of Tact. Tact so employed may denote a very good lawyer, 
but a very indifferent man. 

Those who had the pleasure of hearing Thorn, the weaver 
poet, converse, know the Spartan felicity of expression which 
he commanded. His conversation was often a study in rhetoric. 
He told a story in the best vein of Scotch shrewdness. He 
was one day recounting an anecdote of Inverury, or old Aber- 
deen, to a coterie of listeners. The point of the story rested 
on a particular word spoken in fitting place. "When he came 
to it he hesitated as though at a loss for the term. " What is 



50 Public Speaking and Debate. 

it you say under these circumstances," he asked — " not this — 
nor that," he remarked, as he went over three or four terms 
by way of trial as each was endeavouring to assist him — "Ah," 
he added, apparently benevolent towards the difficulty into 

which he had thrown them, "we say — ," for want of a 

better word. This, of course, was the word wanted — the 
happiest phrase the language afforded. He gained several 
things by this finesse— he enlivened a regular narrative by an 
exciting digression, which increased the force and point of the 
climax. He created a difficulty for his auditors, for who, 
when suddenly asked, would be able to find a term which 
seemed denied to his happy resource ? or. finding it, would 
have the courage to present it to such a fastidious epithetist ? 
and he exalted himself by suggesting what appeared out of 
their power, and excited an indefinite wonder at his own skill 
in bringing a story to so felicitous an end, by the employment 
of a make-shift phrase. What would he have done if he could 
have found the right one ? was naturally thought. This was 
tact. It was a case analogous to that given by Dickens in 
one of his early papers, where the President, at an apparent 
loss for a word, asks, " What is that you give a man who is 
deprived of a salary which he has received all his life for doing 
nothing, or perhaps worse, for obstructing public improve- 
ment ?" — " Compensation !" suggests the Yice. The case was 
the same, except that Thorn was his own Yice-President. 

An instructive lesson in Tact is given in the Preface of 
Thomas Cooper to his "Purgatory of Suicides." Those who 
know the variety of historic incidents which crowded for 
record in his career, wonder at the discretion with which he 
confines himself to the few which stand at the portal of his 
majestic poem, to inform you of its origin and design. 



Originality. 51 



PART II. 

ACQUIRED POWERS. 
1 

CHAPTER VII. 

ORIGINALITY. 

Originality is reality. In reference to thought it is the con- 
ception of the truth of nature, in opposition to the truth of 
custom. 

The material of which Originality is made has been dis- 
cussed in previous chapters.* Its manifestation in literature 
has been well illustrated by the author of "Time's Magic 
Lanthorn,"f in a dialogue between Bacon and Shakspeare — 
an extract from which is to this effect : — 

" Bacon. He that can make the multitude laugh and weep 
as you do, Mr. Shakspeare, need not fear scholars. A head 
naturally fertile and forgetive is worth many libraries, inas- 
much as a tree is more valuable than a basket of fruit, or a good 
hawk better than a bag full of game, or the little purse which 
a fairy gave to Fortunatus, more inexhaustible than all the 
coffers in the treasury. More scholarship might have sharpened 
your judgment, but the particulars whereof a character is com- 
posed are better assembled by force of imagination than of judg- 
ment, which, although it perceive coherencies, cannot summon 
up materials, nor melt them into a compound with that felicity 
which belongs to imao'ination alone. 



* Logic of Facts, chaps, ir.. v. 

t A series of papers that appeared in " Blackwood " some years ago. 



52 Public Speaking and Debate. 

" ShaTcspeare. My lord, thus far I "know, that the first glimpse 
and conception of a character in my mind is always engendered 
by chance and accident. We shall suppose, for instance, that 
I am sitting in a tap-room, or standing in a tennis-court. The 
behaviour of some one fixes my attention. I note his dress, 
the sound of his voice, the turn of his countenance, the drinks 
he calls for, his questions and retorts, the fashion of his per- 
son, and, in brief, the whole out-goings and in-comings of the 
man. These grounds of speculation being cherished and 
revolved in my fancy, it becomes straightway possessed with a 
swarm of conclusions and beliefs concerning the individual. In 
walking home, I picture out to myself what would be fitting 
for him to say or do upon any given occasion, and these fan- 
tasies being recalled at some after period, when I am writing 
a play, shape themselves into divers mannikins, who are not 
long of being nursed into life. Thus comes forth Shallow, 
and Slender, and Mercutio, and Sir Andrew Aguecheek. 

" Bacon. In truth, Mr. Shakspeare, you have observed the 
world so well, and so widely, that I can scarce believe you 
ever shut your eyes. I too, although much engrossed with 
other studies, am, in part, an observer of mankind. Their 
dispositions, and the causes of their good or bad fortune, 
cannot well be overlooked even by the most devoted questioner 
of physical nature. But note the difference of habitude. No 
sooner have I observed and got hold of particulars, than they 
are taken up by my judgment to be commented upon, and 
resolved into general lavss. Your imagination keeps them to 
make pictures of. My judgment, if she find them to be com- 
prehended under something already known by her, lets them 
drop and forgets them ; for which reason a certain book of 
essays, which I am writing, will be small in bulk, but, I trust, 
not light in substance. Thus do men severally follow their 
inborn dispositions. 

" Shakspeare. Every word of your lordship's will be an 
adage to after times. For my part, I know my own place, 



Originality. 53 

and aspire not after the abstruser studies : although I can 
give wisdom a welcome when she comes in my way. But the 
inborn dispositions, as your lordship has said, must not be 
warped from their natural bent, otherwise nothing but sterility 
will remain behind. A leg cannot be changed into an arm. 
Among stage-players, our first object is to exercise a new 
candidate until we discover where his vein lies." 

In this mixture of observation and experiment, original 
information has its source. But the conventionalisms of 
society repress its manifestation. Jeffrey, in one of those 
passages marked by more than his ordinary good sense, has 
depicted its influence on young men : — 

" In a refined and literary community," says he, " so many 
critics are to be satisfied, so many rivals to be encountered, 
and so much derision to be hazarded, that a young man is apt 
to be deterred from so perilous an enterprise, and led to seek 
distinction in some safer line of exertion. His originality is 
repressed, till he sinks into a paltry copyist, or aims at distinc- 
tion by extravagance and affectation. In such a state of 
society he feels that mediocrity has no chance of distinction ; 
and what beginner can expect to rise at once into excellence ? 
He imagines that mere good sense will attract no attention ; 
and that the manner is of much more importance than the 
matter, in a candidate for public admiration. In his attention 
to the manner, the matter is apt to be neglected ; and in his 
solicitude to please those who require elegance of diction, 
brilliancy of wit, or harmony of periods, he is in some danger 
of forgetting that strength of reason and accuracy of observa- 
tion by which he first proposed to recommend himself. His 
attention, when extended to so many collateral objects, is no 
longer vigorous or collected ; the stream, divided into so many 
channels, ceases to flow either deep or strong : he becomes an 
unsuccessful, pretender to fine writing, and is satisfied with the 
frivolous praise of elegance or vivacity." 

The Rev. Sidney Smith left on record his oramnn nf tho 



54 Public Speaking and Debate. 

influence of conventionality's cold decorum: — " The great object 
of modern sermons is to hazard nothing : their characteristic 
is decent debility, which alike guards their authors from ludi- 
crous errors, and precludes them from striking beauties. Every 
man of sense, in taking up an English sermon, expects to find 
it a tedious essay, full of commonplace morality ; and if the 
fulfilment of such expectations be meritorious, the clergy have 
certainly the merit of not disappointing their readers." 

Emerson, above all men, has written the philosophy of 
Originality: — "Insist on yourself," says he, "never imitate. 
Your own gift you can present every moment, with the cumu- 
lative force of a whole life's cultivation ; but of the adopted 
talent of another you have only an extemporaneous, half pos- 
session. The way to speak and write what shall not go out 
of fashion, is to speak and write sincerely. Take Sidney's 
maxim : 'Look in thy heart and write.' He that writes to 
himself writes to an eternal public." 



CHAPTER VIII. 



What has Heroism to do with Rhetoric ? the reader will ask. 
Much. Courage in one thing, as we are told, does not mean 
courage in everything. A man who will face a bullet will not 
face an audience. Heroism is the originality of action. 

A cool, easy confidence is the source of daring. " Trust 
yourself : every heart vibrates to that iron string."* In one 
of those papers, rare in " Chambers' Journal," it is remarked : — 
" There must, at all but extraordinary times, be a vast amount 
of latent capability in society. Gray's musings on the Crom- 



Heroism. 55 

wells and Miltons of the village are a truth, though extremely 
stated. Men of all conditions do grow and die in obscurity, 
who, in suitable circumstances, might have attained to the 
temple which shines afar. The hearts of Roman mothers beat 
an unnoted lifetime in dim parlours. Souls of fire miss their 
hour, and languish into ashes. Is not this conformable to 
what all men feel in their own case ? Who is there that has 
not thought, over and over again, what else he could have 
done, what else he could have been ? Vanity, indeed, may 
fool us here, and self-tenderness be too ready to look upon 
the misspending of years as anything but our own fault. Let 
us look, then, to each other. Does almost any one that we 
know appear to do or be all that he might ? How far from 
it ! Regard for a moment the manner in which a vast pro- 
portion of those who, from independency of fortune, and from 
education, are able to do most good in the world, spend their 
time, and say if there be not an immense proportion of the 
capability of mankind undeveloped. The fact is, the bond of 
union among men is also the bond of restraint. We are com- 
mitted not to alarm or distress each other by extraordinary 
displays of intellect or emotion. There are more hostages to 
fortune that we shall not do anything great, than those which 
having children constitutes. £Muny struggle for a while against 
the repressive influences, but at length yield to the powerful 
temptations to nonentity. VThe social despotism presents the 
fetes with which it seeks to solace and beguile its victims ; and 
he who began to put on his armour for the righting of many 
wrongs, is soon content to smile with those who smile. Thus 
daily do generations ripe and rot — life unenjoyed, the great 
mission unperformed. TWhat a subject for-tears in the multi- 
tude of young souls who come in the first faith of nature to 
grapple at the good, the true, the beautiful, but are thrown 
back, helpless and mute, into the limbo of Commonplace.)( Q 
Conventionality, quiet may be thy fireside hours, smooth thy 
pillowed thoughts ; but at what a sacrifice of the right and 



56 Public Speaking and Debate. 

the generous, of the best that breathes and pants in our 
nature, is thy peace purchased !" 

Given says Mr. Dawson, a Cromwell or a Milton, and he 
will make himself felt. But this is the exception. The rule 
of development requires the condition. Paine confesses that 
the world (when he first came to America) could not have 
persuaded him that he should be either a soldier or an author. 
" If I had any talents for either," said he, "they were buried 
in me, and might have ever continued so had not the necessity 
of the times dragged and driven them into action."* He was 
unconscious of his powers. 

There is heroism in trusting yourself to events. That sa- 
gacity of which greatness is born, puts its prowess to the test 
of experiment. In this lies the secret of the hero and the 
scholar — they do not guess their abilities, but determine them 
by enterprise and achievement. They try. 

My friend Mr. Storer, who was the wag of the Rhetoric 
class of which we were members when students, communicated 
to me the subjoined parody. As the soliloquy of a novice it 
expresses with felicity the young speaker's doubts and fears : — 

To spout, or not to spout, that is the question : 

Whether 'tis better for a shamefaced fellow, 

(With voice unmusical and gesture awkward,) 

To stand a mere spectator in this business, 

Or have a touch at Khetoric ? To speak — to spout 

No more ; and by this effort, to say we end 

That bashmlness, that nervous trepidation 

Displayed in maiden speeches, — 'twere a consummation 

Devoutly to be wished. To read — to speechify 

Before folks— ^perhaps to fail ; — ay, there's the rub ; 

For from that ill success what sneers may rise, 

Ere we have scrambled thro* the sad oration, 

Must give us pause : 'tis this same reason 

That makes a novice stand in hesitation, 

And gladly hide his own diminished head 

Beneath some half-fledged orator's importance, 

When he himself might his quietus make 

By a mere recitation. Who could speeches hear, 



/ 



Proportion. 5t 

Responded to with hearty acclamation, 

And yet restrain himself from holding forth — 

But for the dread of some unlucky failure — 

Some unforeseen mistake — some frightful blunder — 

Some vile pronunciation, or inflection, 

Improper emphasis, or wry-necked period, 

"Which carping critics note", and Taise the laugh, 

Not to our credit — nor so soon forgot ? 

"We muse on this ! Then starts the pithy question: 

Had we not best be mute and hide our faults, 

Than spout to publish them. 

Spout and publish them without hesitation. Had Raphael 
feared to daub, he had never been Raphael. Had Canova 
feared to torture marble, he had never been a sculptor. Had 
Maeready feared to spout, he had never been an actor. If 
you stammer like Demosthenes, or stutter like Curran, speak 
on. He who hesitates to hesitate, will always hesitate. 



CHAPTER IX.. 

PROPORTION. 

Bombast is inflation ; is turgid, dropsical language — great in 
parade, little in purport. It has its source in exaggeration, 
in want of proportion. A child catches at its coral and at 
the moon with the same expectation of clutching it. He has 
no idea of distance. The boy cuts a stick or trundles his hoop 
with as much exultation as the man defeats an enemy or wins 
his wife. The boy has no notion of relative value. As every- 
thing seems equally new, so everything seems equally import- 
ant to him. This want of measure, innocent and healthy in 
youth, is the source of bombast in men. 

" Man is a strange animal, but that complex animal, a 
public meeting, is stranger. Its vagaries are surprising, and 
baffle analysis. It always seems to have more force than 
sense. Two heads are better than one, but some hundreds of 



58 Public Speaking and Debate. 

heads appear to be worse than none. Take any number of 
men, each of whom would listen to reason, be open to convic- 
tion, and resolute to see fair play all round ; compound the 
honest nien of sense in a public meeting, and the aggregate is 
headstrong, headlong, rash, unfair and foolish. Tell any sin- 
gle man, totidem verbis, that there is nobody in the world like 
him — nobody so lovely and virtuous as his wife and daughters, 
and he will laugh in your face, or kick you out of doors ; but 
tell the aggregate man the. same of his multitudinous self and 
family — he will vent an ecstasy of delight in ' loud cheers.' "* 
But only the uneducated imitate this delusion. The time will 
come when meetings no more than men will tolerate the col- 
lective nonsense. 

The notorious defence of Thurtell some years since, which 
was so applauded for effectiveness by a portion of the press, is 
one of the most offensive exhibitions of vanity and wind-bag 
eloquence extant. Bombast is the language of vulgarity and 
villainy. Thurtell ought to have been condemned for his 
defence had he escaped from the penalty of his crime. Care- 
lessness of assertion and wildness of accusation are to the 
English people extremely distasteful, as marking either a defi- 
ciency of intellect or a want of the love of truth. 

Royalty has always been a patient and often a greedy 
recipient of egregious adulation. The oratory addressed to 
James I. on his progress through Scotland was of no common 
cast. Officials who addressed him at the various towns at 
which he arrived — "put together Augustus, Alexander, Trajan, 
and Constantine. It was supposed that even the antipodes 
heard of his courtesy and liberality ; the very hills and groves 
were said to be refreshed with the dew of his aspect ; in his 
absence the citizens were languishing gyrades, in his presence 
delighted lizards, for he was the sunshine of their beauty. At 
Glasgow, Master Hay, the commissary, when ' attempting to 

* " Spectator." 



Proportion. 59 

speak before him, became like one touched with a torpedo, or 
seen of a wolf ; and the principal of the University, comparing 
His Majesty with the sun, observed, to that luminary's dis- 
advantage, that Kiug James had been received with incredible 
joy and applause ; whereas a descent of the sun into Glasgow 
would in all likelihood be extremely ill taken. Hyperbole was 
not sufficient — the aid of prodigies was called — a boy of nine 
years old harangued the king in Hebrew, and the schoolmaster 
of Linlithgow spoke verses in the form of a lion."* 

C The measure of a man's understanding lies in his language. 
This he inevitably offers to all observers.^ Besides just taste 
being outraged by disproportion, he who is guilty of it loses 
the power of being impressive. We are told of Dante, whose 
potent use of words has never been surpassed, that great and 
various as his power of creating pictures in a few lines unques- 
tionably was, he owed that power to the directness, simplicity, 
and intensity of his language. In him " the invisible becomes 
visible," as Leigh Hunt says — " darkness becomes palpable, 
silence describes a character, a word acts as a flash of lightning 
which displays some gloomy neighbourhood where a tower is 
standing, witli dreadful faces at the window."| 

" In good prose (says Frederic Schlegel) every word should 
be underlined " — that is, every word should be the right word ; 
and then no word would be righter than another. It comes 
to the same, thing, where all words are italics one may as well 
use roman. There are no italics in Plato, because there are 
no unnecessary or unimportant words.J 

Declamation, which is assertion without proof, is dispro- 
portion in this sense, that it is a dogmatic enunciation, out of 
proportion with what is known by an auditory who reject the 
propositions announced. Nearly all Oriental eloquence is 
declamatory. That 13th chapter of the Corinthians, which 



* Progress and Court of King James the First.—" Quarterly Review." 
t " Athenaeum," Xo. 1115. \ Guesses at Truth. 



60 Public Speaking and Debate. 

relates to charity, is a good instance. Paul tells you assidu- 
ously what charity is, and that it should be practised, but he 
does not once tell you why. Perhaps the Orientals are quicker 
to perceive or less exacting than Europeans, but the want of 
the reasons was felt among us, and Bishop Hooker supplied 
them sixteen centuries after. 

Precision must be attained at any cost. If we do not 
master language, says Mr. Thornton, it will master us. An 
idle word, says the "Daily News," has conquered a host of 
facts. "We must keep watch and ward oyer words. 



CHAPTER X. 



Rousseau sways mankind with that delicious might (the power 
of words) as Jupiter does with his lightnings. This is John 
Miiller's tribute to the style of Rousseau. It has recently 
been asserted among us, that " Style is, and always has been, 
the most vital element of literary immortalities. More than 
any other quality, it is peculiar to the writer ; and no one, not 
time itself, can rob him of it, or even diminish its value. Pacts 
may be forgotten — learning grow commonplace — truths dwin- 
dle into mere truisms — but a magnificent or beautiful style 
can never lose its freshness and its value. For style, even 
more than for his wonderful erudition, is Gibbon admired ; and 
the same quality, and that alone, renders Hume the popular 
historian of England, in spite of his imperfect learning, the 
untrustworthiness of his statements in matters of fact, and the 
anti-popular caste of his opinions."* This is not greater praise 
than I should be inclined to award to masterly style, but this 

* " Daily News," No. 499. 



Style. 61 

eulogy has the fault of making style to appear independent of 
sense. We value Hume for the grace and perspicuity of his 
narrative, and for those profound reflections which, whether 
founded on real or fictitious data, are equally full of wisdom. 
Method, perspicuity, brevity, variety, harmony, are indeed 
separable from sense, but no combination of such qualities will 
give life to a book without sense. They are but the auxiliaries 
of meaning, not the substitutes for it. Gilfillan has happily 
said, that "the secret of perfect composition is manly wisdom, 
uttered in youthful language." Youthful language is simple 
and clear. These are its properties. We are nothing unless 
we are critical, and we are nothing unless we are clear. That 
criticism which destroys the power of pleasing must be blown 
aside, and so must that finesse of style which cannot be under- 
stood. Again, the truth is obvious that sense is the despot 
of style. 

The "Dublin University Magazine" lately had this pas- 
sage : — " Boz has achieved a great thing — he has created a 
style. Perhaps I am wrong to say created — a term which im- 
plies independence of materials — whereas the singular circum- 
stance in this case is, that by careful study of previous styles f 
by imitation of them, by more perhaps than imitation in the 
first instance, this author has produced out of the heterogene- 
ous elements a compound essentially differing from all its com- 
ponent parts, and claiming — claiming justly — the high merit 
of being original. That such a result should follow such a 
course ought to encourage writers who aim at true celebrity 
to adopt this humble and pains-taking initiatory system, which 
though in other arts it has admittedly led to the grandest re- 
sults (in painting, for instance), in literature has been too 
much overlooked and despised. Boz now stands alone in his 
style — he has had no models, he has no imitators, he will prob- 
ably have no disciples." I should think Dickens has smiled at 
this violent attempt to make a literary alchemist of him, as 
one fusing all sorts of styles in his crucible of composition, and 



62 Public Speaking and Debate. 

bringing out quite a new mixture. Present society has fur- 
nished him with materials ; a patient and an accurate observa- 
tion has gathered them; feeling, taste, and humour, have 
combined them, and an unaffected simplicity has told them. 
I suspect that a happy nature and good sense have had more 
to do with Dickens' reputation than any amount of old styles 
■ — than Sterne or Sturm. Tindal said of Pitt's first speech, 
that it was more ornamental than the speeches of Demos- 
thenes, and less diffuse than those of Cicero. That it should 
have been so often quoted, says Macaulay, " is proof how slov- 
enly most people are content to think. It would be no very 
flattering compliment to a man's figure to say that he was 
taller than the Polish Count [or Tom Thumb], and shorter 
than Giant O'Brien ; fatter than anatomie vivante, and more 
slender than Daniel Lambert. No speaking can be less orna- 
mental than that of Demosthenes, or more diffuse than that of 
Cicero." 

Heklenmaier lays it down as a maxim of education that 
Freedom is the all-essential condition of growth and power. 
There can be no fervour while, in the language of Sam Slick, 
"Talk has a pair of stays, and is laced up tight and stiff." 
It is freedom which is the active element of all fresh and vig- 
orous style. Dr. Gilchrist observes that, "What one of the 
ancient philosophers said of laws, may be truly said of rhetor- 
ical rules ; they are like cobwebs which entangle the weak, 
but which the strong break through. The first rule of good 
composition is, that the composer be free and bold. Before a 
man can be a good thinker, or a good writer, he must be free 
and bold — he must be roused to noble daring — he must feel 
his whole soul rising in scornful indignation at the thought of 
having been for a day a blind follower of blind leaders — a slave 
of slaves- — a member of the herd of creeping, crouching, servile 
minds. Can servile composers in the harness of rules, dreading 
the lash of criticism, limping upon quotations with their eye 
upon precedents, and authorities, create a style at once — new 



Style. 63 

and striking, yet just and proper ? All real greatness is the 
offspring of freedom : there may be absurdity, folly, cant, 
hypocrisy, squeamish delicacy, finical politeness, sickly senti- 
mentality, mawkish affectation in every possible fantastic form 
of fashion and variety ; but there cannot be original, sub- 
stantial excellence without intellectual independence, manly 
thinking and feeling." 

As soon as a man understands a subject he is in a condi- 
tion, so far as material goes, to write or speak about it. If 
he has also courage to write himself in his word, he may be 
said to have the materials and the strength to achieve origi- 
nality. But let him not forget that fulness and freedom are 
both blind ; and that without the lights of taste and per- 
spicuity and brevity he may offend, bewilder, and tire. 

Out of all a man may be able to say, taste (by which I 
chiefly mean a sense of utility) selects the most useful things 
which pertain to conviction and improvement. 

An old woman, who showed a house and pictures at Tow- 
cester, expressed herself in these words : — " This is Sir Richard 
Farmer ; he lived in the country, took care of his estate, 
built this house and paid for it, managed well, saved money, 
and died rich. That is his son ; he was made a lord, took a 
place at court, spent his estate, and died a beggar !" A very 
concise, but full and striking aecouut, says Dr. Home. Here 
clearness and brevity are conspicuous : great qualities to 
master ! 

As 'tis a greater mystery in the art 
Of painting to foreshorten any part, 
Than draw it out : so 'tis in books the chief 
Of all perfections to he plain and brief. 

Juniper Hedgehog wrote of the Bishop of Exeter : — 
"What a lawyer was spoiled in that bishop ! What a brain 
he has for cobwebs. How he drags you along through sen- 
tence after sentence — every one a dark passage — -until your 



64 Public Speaking and Debate. 

head swims !" * Characterising with effect the darkness 
which prevails where perspicuity is absent. 

Brevity and precision are oftener manifested among our 
Trench neighbours than among ourselves. The speeches made 
to mobs — the most hurried placards, abound in the felicities 
of condensation. Europe has for some time been agitated 
with communism. Few Englishmen could tell you what is 
meant by it. Yet nearly a century ago Morelly thus expressed 
it : — •" It is the solution of this excellent problem : To find a 
situation in which it shall be nearly impossible for man to be 
depraved or bad." We have never on this side the channel 
approached the felicity of this reply. 

As a model of the old, simple, and manly Saxon tongue, 
the student may consult the writings of the author of the 
"Pilgrim's Progress." If all that Mr. Macaulay avers be 
true, the works of the Bedford tinman deserve special atten- 
tion. The style of Bunyan, says Macaulay, is delightful to 
every reader, and invaluable as a study to every person who 
wishes to obtain a wide command over the English language. 
The vocabulary is the vocabulary of the common people. 
There is not an expression, if we except a few terms in 
theology, which would puzzle the rudest peasant. We have 
observed several pages which do not contain a single word of 
more than two syllables. Yet no writer has said more ex- 
actly what he wanted to say. For magnificence, for pathos, 
for vehement exhortation, for subtile disquisition, for every 
purpose of the poet, the orator, and the divine, this homely 
dialect, this dialect of plain working-men, was sufficient. There 
is no book in our literature on which we would so readily 
stake the fame of the old unpolluted English language, no 
book which shows so well how rich that language is in its own 
proper wealth, and how little it has been improved by all that 
it has borrowed. 

* Jen-old's Shilling Magazine, No. 8. July, 1845. 



Similes. 65 

In the first edition of "Practical Grammar" the author 
fell into this vagueness. If remarks had to be made at the 
end of a statement, it was directed that they should be neither 
"too strong nor too tedious." But when he subsequently 
asked his class at the City Mechanics' Institution, at what 
point of effectiveness a man might be said to be too strong, 
it was agreed that there was error somewhere. And the in- 
junction not to be " too tedious " was found to imply that we 
might be tedious in some degree — which hardly seemed desira- 
ble. Then it was asked, What is Strength ? Some answered, 
Power. What was Power ? Some said, Effectiveness. But 
it was soon felt that these definitions left us like Swift's defini- 
tion of style, that it was the use of proper words in proper 
places. What were proper words and proper places, still 
remained open questions. So, if power was strength, and 
strength effectiveness, what was effectiveness was still un- 
known. It was finally agreed that to be strong was to be 
just, and to avoid being tedious was to be brief. We, there- 
fore, agreed that "remarks just and brief" were the proper 
characterisation. For what was just could never be too 
strong, and what was brief could never be too tedious. From 
which we also learned that the secret of the strength of com- 
ment lay in just sentiments, and that tedium was the tiresome 
progeny of prolixity. , 



CHAPTER XI 



Paracelsus announced what Cogan reiterated, that " it is as 
necessary to know evil as good ; for who can know what is 
good without knowing what is evil ?" This principle of con- 
trast is that upon which truth depends for its development 



66 Public Speaking and Debate. 

and effect for its power. It is the principle on which similes 
are founded. 

To preserve peace and to do good is a very old maxim of 
morality. Felthain. thus enforces it : — " When two goats, on 
a narrow bridge met over a deep stream, was not he the wiser 
that lay down for the other to pass over him, rather than he 
that would hazard both their lives by contending ? He pre- 
served himself from danger, and made the other become debtor 
to him for his safety. I will never think myself disparaged 
either by preserving peace or doing good." This comparison 
elevates the sentiment, relieves its repetition from triteness, 
and gives it the freshness of truth. 

Paine, whom I have heard Ebenezer Elliot describe as a 
great master of metaphor, said of a certain body in America, 
that at the very instant that they are exclaiming against the 
mammon of this world, they are nevertheless hunting after it 
with a step as steady as time, and an appetite as keen as 
death. The immutable insatiableness sought to be charac- 
terised is rendered much more evident by these similes. It 
will be observed that the contrast implied in similes is not 
absolute ; it is the comparison of a lesser degree with a greater, 
which marks the idea to be enforced. This is seen in the say- 
ing of Dmnont to the effect, that " Both the Rolands felt con- 
vinced that Freedom could never flourish in France, and spring 
up a goodly tree, under the shadow of a throne." It is fur- 
ther seen in the remark of Mirabeau, who, when asked to 
counsel an obstinate friend, answered, " You might as well 
make an issue in a wooden leg as give him advice." The same 
principle is observable in the observation of Emerson, at the 
soiree of the Manchester Athenaeum, at which he spoke. Ex- 
pressing the latent strength of Old England, he said she "had 
still a pulse like a cannon." The felicity of the simile was per- 
fect. The same person, denoting the freshness of style of 
Montaigne, said the words, if you cut them they would bleed. 
The " Cork Magazine" says that the preface of Thomas Davis 



Similes. 61 

to the speeches of Curran is, in some parts, as majestic as the 
orations which it prefaces ; in others, displaying a wild pathos, 
which " strikes upon the ear like the cry of a woman." 

It does not appear to me to be necessary to enter into the 
usual enumeration of the various figures of speech specially set 
forth in rhetorics. Under the principle of comparison so wide 
a range of illustration is included as to be sufficient for the use 
of the rhetorician. Nothing, we are told, so works on the hu- 
man mind, barbarous or civilised, as a new symbol. Metaphor 
is the majestic ground of enforcement, and its occupation is as 
extensive as its power. It is by this means the poverty of lan- 
guage is enriched by the eloquence of the universe, and the 
whole of inanimate nature admitted into society with man. — 

In Eastern lands they talk in flowers, 

And tell in a garland their loves and cares ; 
Each blossom that blooms in their garden-bowers 

On its leaves a mystic language bears. 

Comparisons are implied by phrases. An instance occurs 
in Newman's works, where he says — " Heresy did but precip- 
itate the truths before held in solution." The allusion is chem- 
ical, but very happy. Symbols expressed or implied were the 
weapons of Mirabeau. Contempt for the men-millinery of lit- 
erature was never more forcibly expressed than in these words 
of his — " My style readily assumes force, and I have a com- 
mand of strong expressions ; but if I want to be mild, unc- 
tuous, and measured, I become insipid, and my flabby style 
makes me sick." Dumont, a friend of Mirabeau's, recounting 
his own editorial experience in preserving brevity and a wise 
directness in his journal, says — " The most diffuse complained 
of our reducing their dropsical and turgescent expressions." 

By some comparisons all the power of condensation is re- 
alised. Grattan, comparing the Irish Parliament to a departed 
child, exclaimed, " I have sat by its cradle and I followed its 
hearse." There is here all the grandeur of eloquence and 
erief. 



68 Public Speaking and Debate. 

In the " Auditor," Lord Viscount Barrington was described 
as a little squirrel of state, who had been busy all his life in 
the cage, without turning it round to any human purpose. The 
clearness attained by this simile needs no explanation. Sever- 
ity can be conveyed with equal ease, as instanced in Judge 
Haliburton's asseveration, that Humility is the dress-coat of 
pride. 

It is a trite remark that men draw their symbols from those 
departments of science, or life, with which they are most fa- 
miliar. The Greeks filled their language with geometrical 
allusions. Lieut. Lecount, the well known mathematician, 
having occasion to describe a wound, says — " One of the latest 
cases was a man with a round ulcer, about two and a half 
inches in diameter, on one "side of his leg, and an oval one, five 
inches by two and a half, on the other side.* 

When Mr. Mould, the undertaker in " Nicholas Nickleby," 
speaks of Shakspeare, it is as the theatrical poet who was buried 
at Stratford. But it matters not whence the similes are drawn 
provided they are appropriate. In a sermon preached at New- 
gate after the escape of Jack Sheppard, the clergyman dis- 
coursed to this effect : " How dexterously did he pick the 
padlock of his chain with a crooked nail — burst his fetters 
asunder — climb up the chimney — wrench out an iron bar — 
break his way through a stone wall — make the strong door of 
a dark entry fly before him — reach the leads of the prison — fix 
a blanket to the wall with a spike stolen from the chapel — de- 
scend to the top of the turner's house — cautiously pass down 
stairs, and make his escape at the street door. 

" I shall spiritualise these things. Let me exhort ye, then, 
to open the locks of your hearts with the nail of repentance ; 
burst asunder the fetters of your beloved lusts ; mount the 
chimney of hope ; take thence the bar of good resolution • 
break through the stone wall of despair, and all the strong- 

* " Midland Observer." March, 1844. 



Similes. 69 

holds in the dark entry of the valley of the shadow of death ; 
raise yourselves to -the leads of Divine meditation; fix the 
blanket of faith with the spike of the church ; let yourselves 
down to the turner's house of resignation ; descend the stairs 
of humility. So shall you come to ttie door of deliverance 
from the prison of iniquity, and escape from the clutches of 
that old executioner the devil, who goeth," etc., etc.* 

The child, when he first learns to speak, will say anything, 
thinking he accomplishes much in continuing to talk. So with 
the public speaker when he first commences, and so with the 
early efforts of the young writer. He knows nothing of 
symbolic beauty or rhetorical proportion — he does not suspect 
that there are gaudy images and encumbering ornaments. 
When he first rises above the level of plain prose, he never 
knows when to descend to the earth ; and instead of finding 
an elevation whence he can show his readers a wider landscape 
and new objects, he thinks he does enough by showing himself. 

Prodigality of metaphors, like multitudes of superlatives, 
confound meaning. " It is an idle fancy of some," says Felton, 
" to run out perpetually upon similitudes, confounding their 
subject by the multitude of likenesses, and making it like so 
many things, that it is like nothing at all." 

The general rule to be observed is obvious. When we 
intend to elevate a subject, we must choose metaphors which 
are lofty or sublime. If our purpose is to degrade, the similes 
which sink the subject to contempt or ridicule are proper for 
employment. These are the two poles of tendency. A member 
of the Iudiana Legislature has said, " Mr. Speaker, — The 
wolf is the most ferocious animal that prowls in our Western 
prairies, or runs at large in the forests of Indiana. He creeps 
from his lurking-place at the hour of midnight, when all nature 
is locked in the silent embraces of Morpheus ; and ere the 



* Volume of Trials of Criminals, printed at Leeds, 1S09, for J. Davies, by Edward 
Baines. 



70 Public Speaking and Debate. 

portals of the East are unbarred, or bright Phoebus rises in all 
his golden majesty — whole litters of pigs are destroyed." 
Wanting sustainment, these figures end in the ridiculous. 



CHAPTER XII. 

PLEASANTRY. 

I offer only a few suggestions on this subject. The happiest 
vein of pleasantry is needed to pen a suitable essay upon it. 
If men of wit and humour would analyse the sources of their 
inspirations, pleasantry might be taught as an art. And why 
not ? Recreation is an element of health — a component of 
human nature — the third estate of life. It ought to have its 
professors and cultivators. 

A comedian went to America, and remained there two 
years, leaving his wife dependent on her relatives. Mrs. 

F tt expatiating in the green-room on the cruelty of 

such conduct, the comedian found a warm advocate in a well- 
known dramatist. " I have heard," says the latter, " that he 
is the kindest of men ; and I know that he writes to his wife 
every packet." " Yes, he writes," replied Mrs. F., " a parcel 
of flummery about the agony of absence, but he has never 
remitted her a shilling. Do you call that kindness?" "De- 
cidedly," replied the author, " unremitting kindness." Here 
the wit turns upon words. 

Goodrich relates a converse instance : — " I once heard of 
a boy, who, being rebuked by a clergyman for neglecting to 
go to church, replied, that he would go if he could be permit- 
ted to change his seat. ' But why do you wish to change 
your seat ?' said the minister. ' You see,' said the boy, ' I sit 
over the opposite side of the meeting-house, and between me 
and you there's Judy Yicars and Mary Staples, and half-a-dozen 



Energy. 71 

other women, with their mouths wide open, and they get all 
the best of the sermon, and when it comes to me its pretty 
poor stuff.' " 

"Wit is the philosopher's quality, humour the poet's ; the 
nature of wit relates to things, humour to persons. Wit 
utters brilliant truths ; humour, delicate deductions from the 
knowledge of individual character. Rochefoucault is witty, 
the Yicar of Wakefield the model of humour."* 

English humour is frank, hearty, and unaffected. Irish 
light as mercury. It sets propriety at defiance. It is extra- 
vagant. Scotch humour is sly, grave, and caustic. Surely 
the analysis of Pleasantry is possible, and its cultivation 
practicable. 

Many persons never think of pleasantry as an agent of 
relief in exposition, and of effect in many departments of 
enforcement. Some worry jokes to death. A man who runs 
after witticisms is in danger of making himself a buffoon. 
Some speakers are so beset with the love of this display that 
they virtually announce to their audiences that the smallest 
laugh would be thankfully received. A degree of wit pertains 
to all topics. That which lies in our way is that which is 
relevant. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

ENERGY. 

Energy is the soul of oratory ; and energy depends on health. 
Dr. Samuel John^Dn, with that strong sense for which he was 
distinguished, once said, we can be useful no longer than we 
are well. Of the rhetorician it may as safely be said that he 

* Bulwer's Student. 



T2 Public Speaking and Debate. 

is effective no longer than lie is well. A variety of arts may 
be pursued in indifferent health — feebleness only prolongs exe- 
cution — in rhetoric it mars the whole work. Even in the 
matter of efficient thinking health is worth attention. The 
senses being the great inlets of knowledge it is necessary that 
they be kept in health. It will be idle to conceal from our- 
selves that the physical is the father of the moral man. 
"Morals depend upon temperaments.' 7 * 

The patience necessary for investigation cannot be preserved 
with impaired nerves. Long-continued wakefulness is capable 
of changing the temper and mental disposition of the most 
mild and gentle, of effecting a complete alteration of their 
features, and, at length, of occasioning the most singular 
whims, the strangest deviations in the power of imagination, 
and, in the end, absolute insanity. 

It may not be necessary, because Carneades took copious 
doses of hellebore as a preparative to refuting the dogmas of 
the stoics, or because Dryden, when he had a grand design, 
took physic and parted with blood, that the searcher after 
truth should commence with an aperient ; yet it will be useful 
that some attention be paid to the physiology of the 

intellect, -whose use 



Depends so much upon the gastric juice. 

The public well remember the case of an ex-occupant of 
the woolsack, who, after "six days' indisposition/' attempted 
the annihilation of Lord Aberdeen on account of his Scotch 
Church Bill. The " Times," with some satire, expressed, in refer- 
ence to it, much truth. "We recognise the deep interest of 
the public in Lord B.'s medicine-chest. We pray him to take 
care of himself for all our sakes. We entirely enter into the 
feelings of a man who, after suffering six days under dyspepsia, 
bile, or otherwise, rushes into the House of Lords to avenge 

* Edward Johnson — Life, Health, and Disease. 



Energy. 13 

upon some minister the disarrangement of his system, The 
castigation of a Secretary of State is an interesting incident 
in his disorder, a gratifying palliative of his discomfort ; but 
it is, after all, in Epsom salts or quinine that the true and only 
effectual remedy must be found."* 

Perhaps the lowest quality of the art of oratory, but one 
on many occasions of the first importance, is a certain robust 
and radiant physical health— great volumes of animal heat. 
In the cold thinness of a morning audience, mere energy and 
mellowness is inestimable ; wisdom and learning would be 
harsh and unwelcome compared with a substantial man, who 
is quite a house-warming. I do not rate this animal life very 
high ; yet, as we must be fed and warmed before we can do 
any work well, so is this necessary. j" It often happens that 
you cannot come into collision with opinion without coming 
into collision with persons. What would Danton have been 
without his cannon voice. When Mirabeau spoke, his voice 
was like the voice of destiny. He seemed as if moulded to be 
the orator of nature. The wise orator will as much attend to 
the exercise which gives him health, as to the exercise which 
gives him skill. We go to the oratorio to hear sublime senti- 
ments set to the music of art, we go to the orator to hear 
them enforced by the music of nature. Oratory is the personal 
ascendancy of opinion. Without physical fascination it descends 
to mere eloquence of words. Intellect moves the scholar only. 
Oratory moves the illiterate to noble deeds. 

When travelling expenses were the only payment I received 
for my lectures, I used to walk to the place of their delivery. 
On my walk from Birmingham to Worcester, a distance of 26 
miles, it was my custom to recite on the way portions of my 
intended address. In the early part of my walk my voice was 
clear, and thoughts ready — but towards the end I could 
scarcely articulate, or retain the thread of my discourse. If 



" Times," June 29, 1843. 
4 



74 Public Speaking and Debate. 

I lectured the same evening, as sometimes happened, I spoke 
without connection or force. The reason was that I had ex- 
hausted my strength on the way. One Saturday I walked 
from Sheffield to Huddersfield to deliver on the Sunday two 
anniversary lectures. It was my first appearance there, and I 
was ambitious to acquit myself well. But in the morning I 
was utterly unable to do more than talk half inaudibly and 
quite incoherently. In the evening I was tolerable, but my 
voice was weak. My annoyance was excessive. I was a para- 
dox to myself. My power seemed to come and go by some 
eccentric law of its own. I did not find out till years after 
that the utter exhaustion of my strength had exhausted the 
powers of speech and thought, and that entire repose instead 
of entire fatigue should have been the preparation for public 
speaking;. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

ELOQUENCE, ? 

"The histories of old times, and even of not very distant 
ones, acquaint us with the wondrous effects of eloquence upon 
whole multitudes, carried away to far crusades by the oratory 
ff a hermit ; and even upon grave political assemblies and 
parliaments, which an able speaker could twist, turn, and per- 
suade according to fantasy, so that majorities hung upon his 
words. There is no such thing now-a-days. Audiences are 
neither so pliable nor so soft — and eloquence, however mighty, 
fails in carrying convictions by storm. Perhaps this is the 
reason why so few public men of the present day fall into the 
mistake of striving or affecting to be eloquent. 

" Persuasion, in fact, is now a long-winded and tedious task. 
The winning of an audience, of a party — the inculcating an 
idea, the disseminating it — the winning conviction first, and 



Eloquence. 75 

getting up the enthusiasm after- — is now a slow work, almost 
like the dropping of a seed, and patiently waiting till it grows, 
in order to foster it, water it, protect its growth, and enjoy 
its expansion into the stem and the flower ; such is the politi- 
cal eloquence of modern times. He who discovered it, and 
who practices it, is— Richard Cobden."* 

This is a fair history of modern eloquence ; but it is hardly 
true that Mr. Cobden " discovered" it. He has been its great- 
est illustrator, but it has grown with the growth and commer- 
cial character of the nation. Long before Cobden's time, the 
magic fancy of Burke, the glittering sophistries of Pitt, the 
thundering declamation of Fox, were all alike founded upon 
the general and lasting truth of things — upon profound views 
■ — upon the inexhaustible resources of the understanding. 
The king of transcenclentalists has said that ' Eloquence must 
first be plainest narrative or statement ; afterwards it may 
w.arni itself until it exhales symbols of every kind, and speaks 
only through the most poetic forms ; but at first and last it 
must still be, at bottom, a statement of facts. All audiences 
soon ask, ' What is he driving at V and if this man does not 
stand for anything, he will be deserted."")" This writer has 
given us the most eloquent version of ek>quence extant. The 
substance of his views is as follows : — "First, then, the orator 
must be a substantial person ; then the first of his special 
weapons is, doubtless, power of statement — to have the fact 
and to know how to tell it. Xext, is that method or power of 
arrangement which constitutes the genius and efficacy of all 
remarkable men. Next to this is the power of imagery. No- ' 
thing so works on the human mind, barbarous or civilised, as 
a new symbol. The power of dealing with facts, of illumina- 
ting them, of sinking them by ridicule or diversion of mind, 
rapid generalisation, humour, wit, and pathos, all these are 
keys which the orator holds ; yet these foreign gifts are not 

* " Daily Xevrs," No. 522 t Emerson. 



76 Public Speaking and Debate. 

eloquence, and do often hinder a man from the attainment of 
it. To come to the heart of the mystery, the truly eloquent 
is, a sane man with power to communicate his sanity. Arm 
a man with all the talents just enumerated, so potent and so 
charming, and he has equal power to ensnare and mislead, as 
to instruct and guide you. A spectacle we may go round the 
world to see, is a man who, in the prosecution of great de- 
signs, has absolute command of the means of representing his 
ideas, keeps the grasp of a lion on his materials, and the eye 
of a king to dispose them right, never for an instant light- 
minded or insane. But, in the great triumph of the orator, 
we must have something more ; we must have a certain re-in- 
forcing of the man from the events, so as to have the double 
force of reason and destiny. The eloquent man is not he who 
has beautiful speech, but he who is inwardly and desperately 
drunk with a certain belief, agitating and tearing him, per- 
haps almost bereaving him of the power of articulation. Then 
it rushes from him, in short abrupt screams, in torrents of 
meaning. The possession of his mind by the subject is so 
entire, that it ensures an ardour of expressions which is the 
ardour of nature itself — and so is the ardour of the greatest 
force, and inimitable *by any art. Add to this a certain reg- 
nant calmness, which, in all the tumult, never utters a prema- 
ture syllable, and keeps the secret of his means and method — 
and the orator stands before the people, as a demoniacal 
power, to whose miracles they have no key. Youth should 
lay the foundation of eloquence, not on popular arts, but on 
character and honesty. Let the sun look on nothing nobler 
than he — let him speak for the right — let him not borrow the 
language of idle gentlemen or scholars, much less that of sen- 
sualists, absorbed in money or appetite — but let him commu- 
nicate every secret of strength and good-will communicated to 
his own heart, to animate men to better hopes — let him speak 
for the absent, defend the friendless and defamed, the poor, the 
slave, the prisoner, and the lost. Let him look upon opposition 



Eloquence. IT 

as opportunity : he is one who cannot be defeated or put down. 
Let him feel that it is not the people who are in fault, for not 
being convinced, but he who cannot convince them. He has 
not only to neutralise their opposition — that were a small 
thing — but to convert them into apostles and publishers of the 
same wisdom." 

The only alteration I would make in this account is this : 
instead of making eloquence a thing of degree, which con- 
founds eloquence with oratory, I would mark the distinction. 
Eloquence belongs merely to words, oratory to the passion 
which fires them. The eloquence of intellect is that of speech, 
and sense, and symbol ; but the oratory which so seldom greets 
the ears of men is the eloquence of the man. The philosopher 
only reaches the scholar — the orator reaches the mob. The 
philosopher talks the rhetoric of the schools — the orator, the 
language of nature : he speaks heart words — 'that language 
which is wide as the world, which reaches humanity, which all 
nations understand — which the deaf and dumb can feel — the 
language of attitude, of gesture — that which moves us on can- 
vass, breathes on marble. It is the burning word of passion. 
It knows no high, no low, no rich, no poor, no citizen, no 
alien, no foreigner, no crime, no colour. Savage and civilised, 
learned and illiterate, (the accidents of condition,) sink into 
insignificance when man speaks to man. The orator penetrates 
to the equality of humanity. It is in the equality of our 
common nature that a common purpose originates. He alone 
who penetrates there inspires unanimity. It is when the mul- 
titude are of one opinion that the orator's power is revealed— 
that is the seal that nature stamps upon his genius. 

It is said that one day when Masillon was preaching upon 
the Passion before Louis XIV. and all the court, he so affected 
his hearers that everybody was in tears, except a citizen, who 
appeared as indifferent to what he heard as to what he saw. 
One of his neighbours, surprised at such insensibility, re- 
proached him for it, and said to him, " How can you refrain 



78 Public Speaking and Debate. 

from weeping, while we are all bathed in tears?" "That is 
not astonishing," answered the citizen, "lam not of this par- 
ish." The eloquence which I have endeavoured to describe 
would have included this man, also, in the general weeping. 
To say — That a touch of nature makes the whole world kin, 
is only another way of saying — -That " man is related to all 
nature." Eloquence discovers this relation. In the first 
remark, Shakspeare gives the effect, of which, in the second 
remark, Emerson has assigned the cause. 

With respect to passion, to which much importance has 
been assigned, it will be useful to remark, that though we 
must admit, with Lord Karnes, that the plainest man animated 
with passion affects us more than the greatest speaker without 
it, we must keep in view that the only passion tolerated among 
us is the passion of conviction. All the rest is, to Englishmen 
— rant. The passion of conviction is modest, manly, and 
earnest. 



CHAPTER XY. 



PREMEDITATION. 



There is every reason to believe that the greatest masters of 
oratory have been most sensible of the value and have most 
practised premeditation. It is only the young would-be 
speaker who expects to be great without effort, or whose 
vanity leads him to impose upon others the belief that he is 
so — who affects to despise the toil of preparation. One of 
the biographers of Canning tells us that it is remarkable, that 
with his broad sense of great faculties in others, he was him- 
self fastidious to excess about the slightest turns of expression. 
He would correct his speeches, and amend their verbal graces, 
till he nearly polished out the original spirit. He was not 



Premeditation. 79 

singular in this. Burke, whom he is said to have closely 
studied, did the same. Sheridan always prepared his spc ehes; 
the highly-wrought passages in the speech on Hastings' ini- 
hnient were written beforehand and committed to memory ; 
and the differences were so marked, that the audience could 
readily distinguish between the extemporaneous passages and 
those that were premeditated. Mr. Canning's alterations 

frequently so minute and extensive, that the printers 
found it easier to recompose the matter afresh in type than to 
correct it. This difficulty of choice in diction sometimes 
springs from Vembarras des richestes, but oftener from poverty 
of resources, and generally indicates a class of intellect which 
is more occupied with costume than ideas. But here are three 
instances which set all popular notions of verbal fastidious 
by the ears : for certainly Burke. I - .;! Sheridan were 

men of capacious talents : and two of then.. resent 

extraordinary samples of imagination and practical judgment, 
running together neck and neck in the race of life to th: 
goal 

we the low state of oratory in this country to a great 
■ the false contempt for "cut and dried spec/: 
till it has come to 1 sign of weakness for a man 

to think before he speaks. A: 

Ioned young preachers _ ling that because 

- ^ ke well without premedita:' tl : ::hers 
will speak so, unless, like the A " are specially in- 

- 

Perhaps, although we use the term, we never have had 

-y in England. There is an essential difference between 

ry and debating -. oratory seems an accomplishment con- 
fined to the ami. Is as the French preachers may put in 

claim, and some of the Irish lawyers. Mi S speech 

in Kent was a fine oration : and the taunted him 

for having got it by rote, were not aware that in doing so he 
only wisely followed the example of Pericles. Dei sthenec 



80 Public Speaking and Debate. 

Lycias, Isocrates, Hortensius, Cicero, Caesar, and every great 
orator of antiquity.* 

It has been said by a popular writer that Demosthenes not 
only prompts to vigorous measures, but teaches how they are 
to be carried into execution. His orations are strongly ani- 
mated, and full of the impetuosity and ardour of public spirit. 
His composition is not distinguished by ornament and splen- 
dour. It is an energy of thought, peculiarly his own, which 
forms his character, and raises him above his species. He 
appears not to attend to words, but to things. We forget the 
orator, and think of the subject. He has no parade and 
ostentation ; no studied introduction ; but is like a man full 
of his subject, who, after preparing his audience by a sentence 
or two, for the reception of plain truths, enters directly on 
business. 

Blair should have said Demosthenes had no elaborate 
exordiums. They were "studied," as is proved by their per- • 
tinency and fitness. Demades says that Demosthenes spoke 
better on some few occasions when he spoke unpremeditatedly. 
Probably he spoke well in some of these instances, but it was 
the result of power acquired by premeditation. As a general 
rule, he who thinks twice before speaking once will speak 
twice the better for it. 

When Macaulay was about to address the House of Com- 
mons, his anxious and restless manner betrayed his intention. 
Still he was regardless of the laugh of the witlings and con- 
tinued intent on his effort. This is the real courage that does 
things well — the courage that is neither laughed nor frowned 
from its purpose. 

Macaulay spoke early in the evening before the jarring of 
the debate confused him, or long attention enfeebled his 
powers. Only the ignorant despise -attention to minute de- 
tails. When the great Lord Chatham was to appear in public 

* "Young Duke," by B. Disraeli. 



Premeditation. 81 

he took much pains about his dress, and latterly he arranged 
his flannels in graceful folds. It need not then detract from 
our respect for Erskine, that on all occasions he desired to 
look smart, and that when he went down into the country on 
special retainers, he anxiously had recourse to all manner of 
innocent little artifices to aid his purpose. He examined the 
court the night before the trial, in order to select the most 
advantageous place for addressing the jury. On the cause 
being called, the crowded audience were perhaps kept waiting 
a few minutes before the celebrated stranger made his appear- 
ance ; and when, at length, he gratified their impatient cu- 
riosity, a particularly nice wig and a pair of new yellow gloves 
distinguished and embellished his person beyond the ordinary 
costume of the barrister of the circuit.* 

Amid the applause in this chapter bestowed upon Premedi- 
tation, it would not be just to omit the ridicule with which it 
has been visited by the Rev. Sidney Smith. " It ig only by 
the fresh feelings of the heart that mankind can be very power- 
fully affected. What can be more ludicrous than an orator 
delivering stale indignation and fervour of a week old ? turn- 
ing over whole pages of violent .passions, written out in Ger- 
man text ; reading the tropes and apostrophes into which he 
is hurried by the ardour of his mind, and so affected at a 
preconcerted line and page, that he is unable to proceed any 
further." True, "it is only by the fresh feelings of the heart 
that mankind can be very powerfully affected." But Xature 
is always fresh — and he who reproduces Nature will always 
affect. Macready never stabbed his daughter to preserve her 
honour. Yet every man is moved at his Yirginius. As 
Othello, Macready's "indignation" at Iago is thirty years 
old, yet we are as much affected by its intensity as on the 
first day when he displayed it. The speech of Antony over 
the dead body of Caesar was "written in German text" in 

* CtimpbelTs Lives of the Chancellors. 



82 Public Speaking and Debate. 

the days of Elizabeth : it was "cut and dried" two hundred 
years ago. Yet, whatever our satirical canon may say to 
the contrary, it ceases not to affect us now. A great idea 
well expressed, or a deep feeling naturally pourtrayed, is " a 
thing of beauty and a joy for ever." 



CHAPTER XVX. 



It was said by Panchancl, that Mirabeau was the first man in 
the world to speak upon a question he knew nothing about. 
But Mirabeau had the confidence which enabled him to 
abandon himself to the reality of occasions, and he read the 
lessons they brought with them, while other men went to 
books ; and, as reality is the most powerful teacher, he was 
wiser than the encyclopasdiasts. 

I believe there are no difficulties in the moral or political 
world, no problem of events, which do not also bring their 
solutions with them, were we cool enough to read them ; but 
we never trust ourselves to events- — we do not believe what 
we see, or will not see what is before us. We make precon- 
ceived opinions, predetermined judgment, overrule new facts. 
We too often act the part of the man who is so much in love 
with his bark that he never ventures to sail in it. This is the 
course to be taken — scan the truth, and, having learned it, 
trust to subsequent events to illustrate it. 

In the Premeditation which I have commended, I do not 
mean to exclude extempore application of the faculties. An 
orator should go to the rostrum to announce conclusions, not 
to form them. In this I persist ; but having laid the scene, I 
would leave him free to manage it as he pleased. Let him 
take advantage of the tide of feeling, temper, and exclama- 



Reality. 83 

tlpns of the meeting ; but unless he is firm in a previous pur- 
pose, these things will take advantage of him, and carry him 
away from his subject, instead of his carrying away the 
audience. 

Hie Rhodus ; hie salta* Do no not wait for a change of 
outward circumstances ; but take your circumstances as they 
are, and make the best of them. This saying, which was 
meant to shame a braggart, will admit of a very different and 
profounder application. Goethe has changed the postulate of 
Archimedes, " Give me a standing-place, and I will move the 
world," into the precept, "Make good thy standing-place, 
and move the world." This is what he did throughout his 

life.-f 

Abandonment to reality is the source of presence of mind 
— an indispensable element of oratorical greatness. It is 
storied that Frederick the Great being informed of the death 
of one of his chaplains, a man of considerable learning and 
piety, and determining that his successor should not be behind 
him in these qualifications, he told a candidate about to 
preach a trial sermon at the Royal Chapel, that he would 
himself furnish him with a text from which he was to make an 
extempore sermon. The clergyman accepted the proposition. 
The whim of such a probationary discourse was spread abroad, 
and at an early hour the Royal Chapel was crowded to excess. 
The king arrived at the end of the prayers, and, on the candi- 
date ascending the pulpit, one of his majesty's aids-de-camp 
presented him with a sealed paper. The preacher opened it, 
and found nothing written therein. He did not, however, in 
so critical a moment, lose his presence of mind ; but turning 
the paper on both sides, he said, " My brethren, here is noth- 
ing, and there is nothing — out of nothing God created all 
things, 1 ' and he proceeded to deliver an admirable discourse 



* " Here is Ehodes ; leap here."— Old Fable. 
t Guesses at Truth. By two Brothers. 



84 Public Speaking and Debate. 

upon the wonders of the creation. This man deserved the 
appointment. 

A good converse story is told in Chambers' Scottish Jest 
Book of a minister who had a custom of writing the heads of 
his discourse on small slips of paper, which he placed on the 
Bible before him, to be used in succession. One day, when he 
was explaining the second head, he got a little warm in the 
harness, and came down with such a thump upon the Bible 
with his hand, that the ensuing slip fell over the edge of the 
pulpit, though unperceived by himself. On reaching the end 
of his second head^ he looked down for the third slip ; but, 
alas ! it was not to be found. "Thirdly," he cried, looking 
round him with great anxiety. After a little pause, " Thirdly,' 7 
again he exclaimed ; but still no thirdly appeared. "Thirdly, 
I say, my brethren," pursued the bewildered clergyman ; but 
not another word could he utter. At this point, while the 
congregation were partly sympathising in his distress, and 
partly rejoicing in such a decisive instance of the impropriety 
of using notes in preaching — which has always been an un- 
popular thing in the Scotch clergy — an old woman rose up, 
and thus addressed the preacher : — " If I'm no mista'en, sir, I 
saw thirdly nee out at the east window, a quarter of an hour 
syne." It is impossible for any but a Scotchman to conceive 
how much this account of the loss of thirdly was relished by 
that part of the congregation which condemned the use of notes. 

Before writing or speaking it is of great service to try the 
matter over, by telling it to a critical friend, or explaining it 
to some one utterly ignorant of it. By these trials of reality, 
objections may be learned, impediments to conviction be dis- 
covered, and simplicity of enunciation acquired. If you have 
to speak of topics before thus maturing your power over them, 
supply a relay of telling points — so that when coherency fails 
you, you can have recourse to a striking thought. Few will 
discover its want of relevance. The majority always mistake 
brilliancy for eloquence. But, remember, this expedient will 



Effectiveness. 85 

only save you with the vulgar, the well informed are not thus 
to be imposed on. 

The neglect of the study of reality is, perhaps, nowhere 
so apparent as in the construction of controversial books. 
Authors satisfy themselves with inventing the arguments of 
their opponents — when the easiest and most satisfactory course 
is to extract the most powerful reasoning the other side has 
produced. By this course real objectors could be answered 
instead of imaginary ones. The neglect of this precaution 
was strikingly manifested in a work published some time ago 
entitled "Torrington Hall." 



CHAPTER XVII. 

EFFECTIVENESS. 

Effectiveness lies in proportion. Not in the beauty of a 
pillar or the finish of a frieze, but in the command which the 
whole building has over the spectator — and not in the bril- 
liance of a passage, but in the coherence of the whole lies the 
effectiveness of a speech or a book. 

Foremost in effectiveness stands purpose. Better say noth- 
ing than not to the purpose. Nothing should attract the 
main attention to itself. The chief merit of any part is its 
subserviency to the whole design. When parts are praised, a 
speaker is said to have brilliance — when the whole impresses, 
be is said to have power. 

" The editor of Shelley's posthumous poems apologises for 
the publication of some fragments in a very incomplete state, 
by remarking how much more than every other poet of the 
present clay, every line and word he wrote is instinct with 
beauty. Let no man sit down to write with the purpose of 
making every line and word beautiful and peculiar. The only 



86 Public Speaking and Debate. 

effect of such an endeavour will be to corrupt his judgment 
and confound his understanding."* 

A few generalities may be mentioned, attention to which 
will conduce to effectiveness. Avoid rant — study simplicity ; 
abjure affectation — be natural. The natural voice is heard 
the farthest, and the natural affects the soonest. " The costly 
charm of the ancient tragedy, and, indeed, of all the old 
literature, is, that the persons speak simply — speak as persons 
who have great good sense without knowing it."f Nothing 
astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing. 
Earnestness and simplicity carry all before them. On Thiers' 
first appearance in the French Chamber, he experienced an 
almost universally unfavourable reception, from certain per- 
sonal peculiarities, over the effect of which he soon triumphed. 
In person, Thiers is almost diminutive, with an expression of 
countenance, though intellectual, reflective and sarcastic, far 
from possessing the traits of beauty. The face itself, small in 
form, as befits the body, is encumbered with a pair of spec- 
tacles so large that, when peering over the marble edge of the 
long narrow pulpit, yclept the tribune, whence all speakers 
address the Chamber, it is described as appearing suspended to 
the two orbs of crystal. With such an exterior, presenting 
something of the ludicrous, so fatal to the effect, especially in 
volatile France, M. Thiers, full of the impassioned eloquence 
of his favourite revolutionary orators, essayed to impart those 
thrilling emotions recorded of Mirabeau. The, attempt pro- 
voked derision, but only for a moment. In his new sphere, as 
in the others he had passed through, he soon outshone compe- 
tition. Subsiding into the oratory natural to him, simple, 
vigorous, and rapid, he approved himself one of the most for- 
midable of parliamentary champions. 

Bentham has made a wise remark on prolixity, which may 



* Henry Taylor. Preface to Philip Van Artevelde. 
t Emerson. 






Effectiveness. 87 

teach the student a just use in the measure of words. " Pro- 
lixity," says Bentham, " may be where redundancy is not. 
Prolixity may arise not only from the multifarious insertion of 
unnecessary articles, but from the conservation of too many 
necessary ones in a sentence ; as a workman may be over- 
laden not only with rubbish, which is of no use for him to 
carry, but with materials the most useful and necessary, when 
heaped up in loads too heavy for him at once. The point is, 
therefore, to distribute the materials of the several divisions 
of the fabric into parcels that may be portable without 
fatigue. There is a limit to the lifting powers of each man, 
beyond which all attempts only charge him with a burthen to 
him immoveable. There is in like manner a limit to the grasping 
power of man's apprehension, beyond which if you add article 
to article, the whole shrinks from under his utmost efforts." 
" Too much is seldom enough," say the authors of " Guesses 
at Truth." " Pumping after your bucket is full prevents it 
keeping so." 

Proportion of time as well as proportion of parts is 
essential, both for the sake of the speaker's strength, as well 
as the hearer's patience. Whitfield is reported to have said, 
that a man, with the eloquence of an angel, ought not to ex- 
ceed forty minutes in the length of a sermon, and it is well 
known that Wesley seldom exceeded thirty. " I have almost 
always found," says another eminent preacher, " that the last 
fifteen minutes of a sermon an hour in length, was worse than 
lost, both upon the speaker and congregation." There is prac- 
tical wisdom in these remarks. A man who determines to 
speak but a short time is more likely to command the highest 
energy for his effort, and to speak with sustained power. Half- 
an-hour is time enough for immortality. Mirabeau achieved it 
by efforts of less duration. 

Here it may be observed that a man who intends to be 
brief and comprehensive will seldom need notes to assist him. 
In cases where time cannot be commanded to master the sub- 



88 Public Speaking and Debate. 

ject in the memory, notes are better than the risk of anxiety 
or forgetfulness. Generally speaking, a subject deeply felt and 
fully understood will make itself a place in the memory. 

The chief quality in the success of the late Sir William 
Follett, consisted in his confining himself to what he under- 
stood. This was the basis on which his tact rested. lie 
knew where his strength lay, and kept there. Of the " Lowell 
Offering,' 7 published by Knight some time since, the " Times" 
said, "It is the production of factory girls in Lowell — the 
American Manchester — and we much doubt if all the duchesses 
in England could write as much and so seldom offend against 
good taste. The secret of these girls' success in writing arises 
from their writing only about what they know — common life 
and their own affairs." He who seeks any kind of effect- 
iveness will do well to remember the incidental lesson con- 
veyed in these words. A frequent cause of failure with young 
lecturers is neglecting to find a point of common understand- 
ing between themselves and their auditors. They do not 
comprehend the philosophy of exordium. Much rhetorical 
wisdom may be gathered from the mathematician's example. 
We know that the geometer would in vain reason with others 
unless axioms were previously agreed upon for reference. So 
with an audience. If they do not agree with the speaker as 
to the premises from which he reasons, the audience have no 
standard by which they can test his conclusions. Hence, 
though he may confound them, yet he will never convince 
them. 

It is in this sense that those who would improve the public 
must " write down" to the public. They may, and they ought, 
to elevate the public by their sentiments, but they must found 
their reasoning on what the populace understand and admit, 
or they reason in vain. The people must be taken at what 
they are, and elevated to what they should be. 

Young men, poetical from ardour, and enthusiastic from 
passion rather than principle, will often rush from libraries 



Effectiveness. 89 

crammed with lore, with which nobody else is familiar, and 
pour out before an audience what the speaker believes to be 
both sublime and impressive, but which his hearers cannot 
understand. They grow listless and restless, and he retires 
overwhelmed with a sense of failure. A. B., a young friend 
of considerable promise, thus failed in my presence. I endeav- 
oured thus to divert his despondency. 

" Failures," I urged, " are with heroic minds the stepping- 
stones to success." 

" Why have I not succeeded ?" he asked — " I can never 
hope .to say better things of my own than I said to-night of 
others." 

" The cause of your uon-success is obvious, you commenced 
by addressing your auditors as men, and you left them as 
children. 

" A young preacher who had ascended the pulpit with great 
confidence, but who broke down in the middle of his sermon, 
was met by Rowland Hill as he was rushing from the pulpit. 
1 Young man,' said Rowland, ' had you ascended the pulpit in 
the spirit in which you descend, you would have descended in 
the spirit in which you ascended.' Something of this kind will 
explain your case. In your exordium you should address your 
auditors as though they were children, state your arguments 
as though they were learners, and in your peroration only 
assume them to be men. On the threshold of a new subject 
men are as children — during its unfoldment they are learners : 
only when the subject is mastered are they as men with man- 
hood's power to execute their convictions. Had it struck you 
that probably no man of your audience was familiar with the 
habits of society in the days of Spenser's ' Faery Queene, 7 or 
of the high and mystic imaginings of the solitary Paracelsus, 
would not the thought have caused you to recast your whole 
lecture ? Take care that you do not render yourself amenable 
to the sarcasm of Swift, who when Burnet said, speaking of 
the Scotch preachers in the time of the civil war, ' The crowds 



90 Public Speaking and Debate. 

were far beyond the capacity of their churches, or the reach 
of their voices/ Swift added, ' And the preaching beyond the 
capacity of the crowd. I believe the church had as much 
capacity as the minister.' " 

The error of A. B. became evident to him. It is an error 
that many perpetually commit. In courts of equity the 
judges first distinguish by their approval those young bar- 
risters who unfold a case with simplicity, and make lucid the 
points at issue. Auditors are the judges in popular assemblies, 
and their first applause is bestowed on the clear-headed 



Another source of failure is, that the young lecturer is too 
little impressed with the wide application of the philosophy of 
controversy. The discipline of debate should enter into every 
oration. 

It is for this reason that speaking requires to be in some 
degree verbose. In writing we may be brief, suggestive, and 
epigrammatic, because each word remains to be pondered over. 
But that which falls on the ear not being so permanent as 
that which falls on paper, fullness and many-lighted treatment 
is indispensable. 

The " Encyclopaedia Metropolitana " has the following 
practical synopsis of the leading characteristics which conduce 
to effectiveness :'■ — "As regards the style which speakers should 
use for the public, it is clear that a style too terse is unintel- 
ligible to the majority, while the remedy usually adopted, that 
of using a prolix and amplifying mode of expression, is repug- 
nant to the public, who never fail to desert a speaker who 
employs it. The better plan is to use brief and terse sentences, 
and often repeat the same idea, not by a mere substitution of 
terms, but by a different arrangement of the members, revers- 
ing the premises, or conclusion, etc., never forgetting in the 
repetition always to use terse sentences. Burke is for this an 
admirable model. 

"While it is always preferable to use short sentences, it 



Effectiveness. 91 

must not be supposed that long sentences are always to be 
avoided. Long sentences, with a proper arrangement of their 
members, so that the audience may know what is aimed at, 
and not be compelled to re-read, or call back to memory, a 
sentence just uttered, are by no means obnoxious. If they 
induce trouble, by requiring a second reference, they cause 
ambiguity, because readers and auditors will not willingly give 
themselves this trouble. It is a common fault with authors to 
suppose a clause intelligible, because on their reading it appears 
to suit : but they forget that when they peruse it they know 
what is coming, which is more than can be expected of an 
audience. Hence it frequently happens that the best read and 
the best informed are frequently the worst expounders of their 
particular subjects of thought and study. 

" In laying before the public any exposition, it is absolutely 
essential to avoid all nice distinctions that please, and indeed 
are necessary to a discourse in the closet. The oration is 
similar to a large picture to be viewed at a distance, where 
nice lines are unseen, or perhaps annoying, while broad, nay, 
sometimes vulgar strokes are seen, admired, and, consequently, 
effective. 

' ' In preparing for the press, as the style was in the former 
case reversed from the nicety of an essay, it must be again 
turned to its original propriety. 

" As regards delivery, it is not advisable to adopt any 
system of studied action, modulation of voice, or mimicry of 
others, but merely to thoroughly understand the subject ; and, 
reading or speaking, according to sense, allow nature to modu- 
late the voice in her own way, which will inevitably be the 
best. 

" In speaking, it has often been a matter of deep and 
curious consideration that a person will explain his views to a 
single individual in such terms as to force conviction in many 
instances, and where he fails the exposition would be just such 
a one as would please an audience : it is notorious that what 



92 Public Speaking and Debate. 

will not convince one or two will be most effective on many 
persons : yet while he can succeed in the more difficult task 
with one or two, when he comes before an audience he is totally 
abashed, and cannot utter two consecutive sentences with pro- 
priety, energy, or sense. An analysis proves this bashfulness 
to be concomitant with other phenomena : 1st. The increased 
liveliness of sympathy with numbers ; 2nd. The constant and 
free operation of this sympathy thus lively throughout the 
entire audience. The bashfulness of a speaker may therefore 
be attributable to intricate action and re-action of these several 
sympathies. There is, 1st, the sympathy of the speaker with 
the audience ; 2nd, the fact that the speaker knows how each 
individual sympathises with him ; and 3d, the knowledge of 
the speaker of the great sympathy existing between all the 
members of the audience. 

" It is therefore necessary that the speaker should endeavour 
to lose sight of himself in the audience, and be guided and in- 
spired wholly by the subject, having full confidence in his 
views, and in the necessary relations of things to render an 
exposition so attempted perfectly successful. This is the 
reason that vulgar speakers so frequently succeed. Their very 
eccentricities and vulgarities show the honesty and earnestness 
of purpose, and it is that that never fails to prosper." 



CHAPTER XYIII. 

MASTERY. 

It is truly held by great teachers that the most useful lesson 
the young thinker has to master is to learn one thing at a 
time. Experience tells us that it is also the most difficult. 
He is initiated into the art of thinking (power of consecutive- 
ness is the principal sign of this art), who can think of one 



Mastery. 93 

thing at a time, and he is master of the art who can think of 
any one thing, when he pleases. That which distracts and 
discourages the young student is confounding the steps of 
progress with the results and displays of perfection. He 
confounds the elements of an art with the refinement of its 
mastery. Let him observe the gradations between incipient 
efforts and remote excellence, and the perplexity is cleared up, 
the difficulty surmounted, the discouragement dissipated. 

When Dr. Black had a class of young men at the Reform 
Association, he disciplined them in rhetoric by causing each 
to marshal his discourse on a chosen theme under certain 
heads. These once gone over he required these heads to be 
spoken upon by inversion, beginning probably with the pero- 
ration, continuing with the argument, taking afterwards the 
statement, or other division belonging to the theme, and end- 
ing with the exordium. . Not until a member could speak 
equally well on any one head, and in any order, was he deemed 
master of his subject. 

Professor de Morgan, who is considered the greatest of our 
mathematical teachers, remarks in a paper which he furnished 
to Dr. Larclner's Geometry, that to number the parts of prop- 
ositions, is the only way of understanding them. Indeed all 
great teachers admit that to identify details and grasp the 
whole are the two indices of proficiency. 

Margaret Fuller relates how backwoodsmen of America, 
whom she visited, would sit by their log fire at night and tell 
"rough pieces out of their lives." This disintegration of events 
by men strong of will and full of matter, in order to set dis- 
tinct parts before auditors, is a sign of that power which we 
call mastery. The ability of the backwoodsman would be 
natural ability ; but all ability is the same in nature, though 
different in refinement. Ability is, always, power under com- 
mand. 

A barrister will occasionally state a complex case to the 
jury before him, beginning with the simplest circumstance, 



94 Public Speaking and Debate. 

continuing with the more difficult, arranging the facts in such 
order that the series throw light on the most obscure— that 
the whole case may be fully understood. When he feels this 
to be accomplished, he returns, recapitulates, extracts those 
points that are to have most weight, and puts them before the 
attention in the most prominent and forcible manner, and, if 
his brief will afford it', like Fitzroy Kelly, he sheds tears to 
make his rhetoric pathetic. Without this power of statement, 
analysation, and enforcement of special facts at will, a man is 
not master of his subject— his subject is rather master of him. 
In learning grammar, the parts of speech have first to be 
distinguished—nouns, verbs, descriptives. When these can be 
identified instantly, and in any order- — when their signs are 
evident on cursory inspection, parsing is surmounted. When 
the inflections of these words are as readily perceived, another 
stage of progress is ensured. When the subject, attribute, and 
object of a sentence, are readily known, a third point is at- 
tained. There is a natural order of speech — the order of the 
understanding, the order in which the subject is placed first, 
the affirmation second, the object last. When these positions 
can be transposed with ease, and the sense preserved, an ad- 
ditional portion of power is attained. When compound sen- 
tences can be broken up into short ones— and distinct fragments 
of meaning expressed, one by one, the power of perspicuity 
is acquired. When the different circumstances in any narrative 
can be taken in at a glance, and the speaker or writer can fix 
upon those which are most likely to arrest attention and ar- 
range them so as to produce this effect without losing the 
thread or coherence of truth — the power of impressiveness 
is reached. After this comes the ability to put short clauses 
first, longer ones next, and the lengthiest last, so as to 
fill the ear without marring the meaning or weakening 
the force. When this can be done, the power of elegance 
is possessed. When propositions can be stated with perspi- 
cuity, supported by cogent facts, and arranged with transpa- 



Mastery'. $5 

rent method ; when the enunciation is distinct, manly, and 
sonorons, when similitude or imagery can be introduced, illu- 
minating the subject by the light of wit, sinking it by ridicule 
or elevating it by symbol, thrilling by pathos, or irresistibly 
impressing by rapid condensation— when a speaker can employ 
these weapons at pleasure — -holding them at command with 
the grasp of a lion, and disposing them with the absolute will 
of a king — he has reached the summit of the rhetorical art ; 
and if animated with a sublime purpose, may influence, like 
Demosthenes or Mirabeau, the destinies of men. 

Besides these there are other signs of mastery. Whewell 
thinks that we are never master of anything till we do it both 
well and unconsciously. But there is no test of proficiency so in- 
structive as that put by George Sand into the mouth of Por- 
pora, in her novel of Consuelo. When Consuelo, on the occasion 
of a trial performance, manifests some apprehension as to the 
result, Porpora sternly reminds her, that if there is room in her 
miud for misgiving as to the judgment of others, it is proof 
that she is not filled with the true love of art, which would so 
absorb her whole thoughts as to leave her insensible to the 
opinions of others — and that if she distrusted her own powers 
it was plain they were not yet her powers, else they could 
not play her false. Porpora suggested the most instructive sign 
of mastery. The true love of art, like the perfect sense of duty, 
casteth out fear. And when study and discipline have done 
their proper work, failure is impossible : we do not tremble at 
the result of the trial of our powers, we are rather anxious for 
the opportunity and quite confident as to the result. 



96 Public Speaking axd Debate. 



PART III. 

APPLIED POWERS. 



CHAPTER XIX. 



Assuming that the various principles discussed in this treatise 
are practical and relevant, the application of them to the 
judgment, to literary and oratorical efforts, will be Criticism. 
For instance, after what has been said under the head of Ef- 
fectiveness, the assenting reader will be prepared to pronounce 
that no work, consisting of many pages, should have detached 
and distinguishable beauties in every one of them. Xo great 
work indeed should have many beauties ; if it were perfect, it 
would have but one, and that but faintly perceptible, except 
on a view of the whole. After what has been said in refer- 
ence to the individuality resulting from Method, the reader of 
the works of the facetious American satirist, Paulding, will 
be able to decide to what extent he has the fault, in common 
with some others, of labelling his characters, gay, sedate, or 
cynical, as the case may be, with descriptive names, as if 
doubtful of their possessing sufficient individuality to be other- 
wise distinguished. If a hero cannot make himself known in 
his action and conversation, he is not worth bringing upon 
the boards. The student who coincides with what has been 
explained relative to Brevity, will on reading such a passage 
as this — " Xicias asked merely for quarter for the miserable 
remains of his troops who had not perished in the Asinarius, 



Criticism. 9t 

or upon its banks"* — -be at no loss in discovering the super- 
fluous information given, that Nicias asked for quarter for 
those who "had not perished." Xo general asks for quarter 
for those who have. The same writer tells us, that " Disci- 
pline yielded to the pressure of necessity. They hurried down 
the steep in confusion and without order, and trod one an- 
other to death in the stream." Necessity is all " pressure," 
and it is not necessary to specify the essence of a thing as 
operative. It is needless to tell us that men all " in confu- 
sion" " were without order." 

When we discover a number of emphatic words employed, 
we know the writer or speaker has no consciousness of meas- 
ure. He either has no strength or he does not know where 
it lies. "When Rigby," says D'Israeli, "was of opinion he 
had made a point, you may be sure the hit was hi italics, that 
last resource of the forcible feebles." 

To tell your feelings on reading a book is one way of criti- 
cising its beauties. This rule was suggested to Gibbon on 
reading Longinus. The appeal to nature is here, as elsewhere, 
the purest guide. 

One can only conceive of Hamlet by tracing out men. 
Brutus has first to be found in society. He who has never 
seen the majesty of a noble nature will hardly conceive it well. 
How can we test the orator's skill, or player's art, but by 
rules founded by ourselves on observation ? 

" It belongs," says Schlegel, " to the general philosophical 
theory of poetry and the other fine arts, to establish the fun- 
damental laws of the beautiful. Ordinarily, men entertain a 
very erroneous notion of Criticism, and understand by it nothing 
more than a certain shrewdness in detecting and exposing the 
faults of a work of art." In the search for the beautiful, he 
continues — " everything must be traced up to the root of hu- 
man nature. Art cannot exist without nature, and man can 

* Mayor's History of Greece, chap. xi. 



98 Public Speaking and Debate. 

give nothing to his fellow men but himself. The groundwork 
of human nature is everywhere the same ; but in our investi- 
gations we may observe, that throughout the whole range of 
nature there is no elementary power so simple, but that it is 
capable of dividing and diverging into opposite directions. 
The whole play of vital motion hinges on harmony and con- 
trast."* 

It would be treason to truth — an affectation of philanthro- 
py — to systematically conceal primary errors, or gloze over 
influential faults. It will ever be the province of Criticism to 
notice such in the spirit of improvement. But at length the 
principle has been established in literature, that perfection is 
better advanced by the applause of excellence than by the 
eternal descantation on defects. Human nature has been 
analysed, and it is found that more is to be gained by appeal- 
ing to the sentiment of the beautiful than by exciting the hor- 
ror of deformity. This is now Criticism's admitted canon — 
demonstrated beyond the power of prejudice to distort, or of 
wilfulness to neglect. This principle is not, or should not be, 
understood as warranting the reviewer in conniving at error,, 
bat only as making his chief province to be the genial recog- 
nition of artistic truth. Criticism still keeps watch and ward 
in the towers of Truth, that no enemy from the camps of Er- 
ror shall steal into its dominions ; but it is ever anxious to 
welcome and to admit all followers of Progression, even though 
they may not exactly possess society's accredited passport. 

* Dramatic Art and Literature, chap. L 



Debate. 99 



CHAPTER XX. 

DEBATE. 



Debate is a great advantage, and when you win a sincere and 
able man to discuss with you, enter upon the exercise with 
gratitude. Your opponent may be the enemy of your opinions, 
but he is the friend of your improvement. The more ably he 
confronts you, the more he serves you, if you have but the 
wisdom to profit by it. The gods, it is said, have not given 
to mortals the privilege of seeing themselves as others see 
them- — but, by a happy compensation in human affairs, it is 
given to candid friends to supply what fate denies: and though 
candour does not imply infallibility, it always includes instruc- 
tion — it affords that indispensable light of contrast which 
enables you to discover the truth if hidden from you, or to 
display the truth if you possess it. 

A good writer, says Godwin, must have that ductility of 
thought that shall enable him to put himself in the place of 
his reader, and not suffer him to take it for granted, because 
he understands himself, that every one who comes to him for 
information will understand him. He must view his phrases 
on all sides, and be aware of all the senses of which they are 
susceptible. But this facility can nowhere be so certainly ac- 
quired as in debate, which is evidently a discipline as service- 
able to the writer as to the speaker. 

All investigation should commence without prepossession, 
and end without dogmatism. Each disputant should be more 
anxious to explain, than to defend, his opinion. 

As an established truth is that which is generally received 
after it has been generally examined in a fair field of inquiry, 
it is evident that though truth may be discovered by research, 
it can only be established by debate. It is a mistake to 



100 Public Speaking and Debate. 

suppose that it can be taught absolutely by itself. We learn 
truth by contrast. It is only when opposed to error that we 
witness truth's capabilities, and feel its full power. 

Oral investigation claims especial attention, because, to a 
great extent, it ensures that its results shall be carried into 
practice. The pen develops principles, but it is the tongue 
that chiefly stimulates to action. 

Discussion after public addresses would be of great public 
value. The discipline, to both speaker and hearers, would 
be greatly salutary. The argument against it, that it would 
lead to strife and discord, is the very reason why it should be 
practised. Men are very childish intellectually, while in that 
state in which debate must be prohibited. If they be children, 
train them in the art of debate until they are translated into 
men. 

To admit debate after an address, it is said, enables factious 
individuals to destroy the effect of what has been said. When 
unanimity of opinion comes, discussion will fall into disuse, 
but till it does come (and debate alone can bring it) discussion 
must be borne. It is the fault of the lecturer if any one is 
able to destroy the effect of his lecture. 

As a general rule, discussions set and accidental, are good. 
A twofold reality by their means is brought to bear on the 
public understanding, more exciting than that of any other 
intellectual agency. An opinion that is worth holding is 
worth diffusing, and to be diffused it must be thought about ; 
and when men think on true principles they become adherents 
— but only those adherents are worth having who have thought 
on both sides, and discussion alone makes them do that well. 
True, men may read on both sides ; but it seldom happens 
that men who are impressed by one side care to read the 
other. In discussions they are obliged to hear both sides. If 
men do read both sides, unless they read a " Discussion," they 
do not find all the facts on one side specially considered on 
the other. In a discussion read, unless read at one sitting, the 



Debate. 101 

strength of an impression and the clearness of the argument 
on one side is partly lost before the opponent's side is perused. 
But in an oral debate, the adaptation of fact to fact is com- 
plete as far as it perhaps can be — the pro and con are heard suc- 
cessively, the light of contrast is full and clear, and both sides 
are weighed at the same time, when the eye is sharply fixed 
on the balance. It matters not whether the disputants argue 
for victory or truth. If they are intellectual gladiators, so 
much the better. The stronger they are, the mightier the 
battle, and the more instructive the conflict. It is said that 
people come out of such discussions as they go into them, that 
the same partisans shout or hiss on the same side all through* 
This is not always true, and no matter if it is. The work of 
conviction is often done, though the audience may not show it. 
They may break your head, and afterwards own you were 
right. Human pride forbids the confession, but change is 
effected in spite of pride. But if an audience remain the 
same at night, they will not be the same the next morning. I 
rather like to contemplate that conviction which is begun in 
discussion, not ended there. He who hastily changes is to be 
suspected of weakness or carelessness. The steady and de- 
liberate thinker, who takes time to consider, is the safest con- 
vert. 

If you invite opposition, do it with circumspection. Never 
debate for the sake of debating. It lowers the character of 
debate. The value of free speech is too great to be trifled 
with. Seek conflict only with sincere men. Concede to your 
opponent the first word and the last. Let him appoint the 
chairman. Let him speak double time if he desires it. De- 
bate is objected to as an exhibition in which disputants try to 
surprise, outwit, take advantage of, and discomfit each other. 
To obviate this objection, explain to your opponent the out- 
line of the course you intend to pursue, acquaint him with the 
books you shall quote, the authorities you shall cite, the prop- 
ositions you shall endeavour to prove, and the concessions 



102 Public Speaking and Debate. 

you shall demand. And do this without expecting the same 
at his hands. He will not now be taken by surprise. He 
will be pre-warned and pre-armed. He will have time to 
prepare, and if the truth is in him it ought to come out. 

If you feel that you cannot give all these advantages to 
your opponent, suspect yourself and suspect your side of the 
question. Every conscientious and decided man believes his 
views to be true, and if consistent he believes them to be 
impregnable. Neither in minutes, months, nor years, are they 
to be refuted. Then a man so persuaded may despise petty 
advantages, and enable his opponent to arm himself before- 
hand. 

In another particular, discussions were esteemed unsatis- 
factory. When statement and reply have been made, then 
came the reply to the reply, and then the reply to that, till 
the cavil seemed endless, perplexing, and tiresome. 

Now the object of discussion is not the vexatious chase 
of an opponent, but the contrastive and current statement of 
opinion. Therefore endeavour to select leading opinions, to 
state them strongly and clearly, and when your opponent 
replies, be content to leave his arguments side by side with 
your own, for the judgment of the auditors. In no case dis- 
parage an opponent, mis-state his views, or torture his words, 
and thus, for the sake of a verbal triumph, produce lasting ill- 
feelings. Your sole business is with what he says, not how he 
says it, nor why he says it. Your aim should be that the 
audience should lose sight of the speakers, and be possessed 
with the subject — and that those who come the partisans of 
persons shall depart the partisans of principles. The victory 
in a debate lies not in lowering an opponent, but in raising 
the subject in public estimation. Controversial wisdom lies 
not in destroying an opponent, but in destroying his error — ■ 
not in making him ridiculous so much as in making the 
audience wise. 

Debate requires self-possession — a power to think on your 



Debate. 103 

legs. But even in debate, the victory is oftener with the fore- 
gone than with the impromptu thinker. A man who knows 
his subject well will be forearmed. He alone can distinctly 
see the points in dispute, and the nature of the proof or dis- 
proof necessary to settle the question. 

At the threshold of controversy it is well to define all 
leading terms, which should never be used in any other than 
the settled sense. A common standard of appeal should be 
agreed upon. The question at issue should be stated so clearly 
that it cannot possibly be misunderstood. No opponent should 
be accepted whose sincerity you cannot assume, as it must 
never be questioned in debate. Find no fault with his gram- 
mar, manner, intentions, tone, whatever may be the provo- 
cation. - Attend only to the matter. Hear all things without 
impatience and without emotion. Let your opponent fully 
exhaust his matter. Encourage him to say whatever he thinks 
relevant. Many persons believe in the magnitude of their 
positions, because they have never been permitted to state 
them to others — and when they have once delivered themselves 
of their opinions, they often find for the first time how insig- 
nificant they are. There are some persons whom nobody can 
confute but themselves. When you distinguish such, your 
proper business is to let them do it. Learn to satisfy yourself 
and to present a conclusive statement of your opinions, and 
when you have done so, have the courage to abide by it. If 
you cannot trust your statement to be canvassed by others — 
if you feel anxious to add some additional remark at every 
step — if reply from your opponent begets reply from you, sus- 
pect your knowledge of your own case and withdraw it for 
further reflection. Master as completely as you can your 
opponent's theories, and state his case with the greatest fair- 
ness, and, if possible, state it with more force against yourself 
than your opponent can. The observance of this rule will 
teach you two things — your opponent's strength or weakness, 
and your own also. If you cannot state your opponent's case 



104 Public Speaking and Debate. 

you do not know it, and if you do not know it you are not in 
a fit state to argue against it. If you dare not state your 
opponent's case in its greatest force, you feel it to be stronger 
than your own, and in that case you ought not to argue 
against it. 

The course here suggested will be as useful to truth as to 
the disputant. Great prejudice may often be disarmed by 
thus daring it. In this manner Gibbon delivered his argu- 
ment in favour of an hereditary monarchy. " Of the various 
forms of government which have prevailed in the world, an 
hereditary monarchy seems to present the fairest scope for 
ridicule. Is it possible to relate, without an indignant smile, 
that, on the father's decease, the property of a nation, like 
that of a drove of oxen, descends to his infant son, as yet un- 
known to mankind and to himself ; and that the bravest 
warriors and the wisest statesmen, relinquishing their natural 
right to empire, approach the royal cradle with bended knees 
and protestations of inviolable fidelity ! Satire and declama- 
tion may paint these obvious topics in the most dazzling 
colours, but our serious thoughts will respect a useful preju- 
dice, that establishes a rule of succession independent of the 
passions of mankind ; and we shall cheerfully acquiesce in any 
expedient which deprives the multitude of the dangerous, and 
indeed the ideal, power of giving themselves a master." We 
often hold by an opinion from the belief that those who dissent 
from it do not know its full bearings as we do, or they would 
be of our opinion too : but when, as in the case of Gibbon, 
we are instructed that our opponent perfectly understands our 
case, and states its strongest points, we feel that justice has 
been done to us, and we are the more disposed to acquiesce in 
an adverse judgment, come to after we have been fully heard. 

What Dr. Paley has delineated with respect to a written 
controversy is not inapplicable to an oral debate. The fair 
way of conducting a dispute is to exhibit one by one the ar- 
guments of your opponent, and with each argument the pre- 



Debate. 105 

cise and specific answer you are able to give it. If this 
method be not so common, nor found so convenient as might 
be expected, the reason is, because it suits not always with the 
designs of a writer, which are no more perhaps than to make 
a book • to confound some arguments, and to keep others out 
of sight ; to leave what is called an impression upon the 
reader, without any care to inform him of the proofs or prin- 
ciples by which his opinion should be governed. With such 
views it may be consistent to despatch objections, by observ- 
ing of some "that they are old," and, therefore, like certain 
drugs, have lost, we may suppose, their strength ; of others, 
that " they have long since received an answer ;" which im- 
plies, to be sure, a confutation ; to attack straggling remarks, 
and decline the main reasoning, as " mere declamation ;" to 
pass by one passage because it is "long-winded," another 
because the answerer "has neither leisure nor inclination to 
enter into the discussion of it," to produce extracts and quo- 
tations, which, taken alone, imperfectly, if at all, express their 
author's meaning ; to dismiss a stubborn difficulty with a 
'*- reference," which, ten to one, the reader never looks at ; and, 
lastly, in order to give the whole a certain fashionable air of 
candour and moderation, to make a concession or two which 
nobody thanks him for, or yield up a few points which it is no 
longer any credit to maintain. 

It will be evident that this minuteness of reply could not be 
undertaken without reference to the importance of the ques- 
tion at issue and the abilities of the opponent. Such elaborate 
pains belong only to great occasions. 

It is not necessary always to demonstrate the validity of a 
given position. To show the impotence of the opposite is 
often quite sufficient. 

It is recorded in the historical memoirs of Curran, that his 
general practice as a lawyer, when engaged for the defence, 
was rather to rely on the weakness to which he could reduce 
5* 



106 Public Speaking and Debate. 

the case of his opponents than on the strength of his own, ex- 
cept on»very peculiar occasions. 

Be very careful of generalisation — utter no wholesale cen- 
sure. It will nearly always be wrong. Classify the partisans 
of opinions which you confute. You will reduce your opponents, 
and gain in justice and force ; for when you confound objectors 
together, you outrage all and convince few. If you can dis- 
tinguish classes, address but one class at a time. 

Upon the general rules proper for conducting a debate it is 
hardly possible to enter. Even public meetings in this country 
are conducted on the crudest principles. If men were com- 
monly intelligent, and many were disposed to take part in 
public meetings, it would be impossible that any business could 
be transacted under several days. The assumption that every 
man has a right to be heard, could not be acted upon if half 
who usually attend public meetings were to enforce that 
"right." 

When a speech or lecture is debated, each disputant ex- 
pects to occupy the same time as the speaker, which often 
prevents more than one being heard in reply. But a short 
time for several might be fixed, and thus combine discipline 
with disputation. Brevity of time would induce directness and 
brevity of speech — it is not the work of any one speaker, but 
the work of many to attack the whole lecture, and each 
should select a leading point, and ten minutes would afford 
time for a very effective objection, if one could be raised. 

At public meetings, where many opposing parties often 
struggle to be heard, confusion, delay, and ill-feeling might be 
obviated, by each party pre-appointing a representative of 
ability, in whom confidence could be reposed to speak on their 
behalf, and by those calling the meeting being made acquainted 
with, and consenting to the arrangement, the views of half-a- 
dozen parties could be advocated, where the views of one are 
heard but inadequately and impatiently now. 



Laws of Personalities. 10? 

CHAPTER XXL 

LAWS OF PERSONALITIES. 

The first problem that has to be solved by the people is one of 
fraternisation. If we wait till unity of opinion on all points 
is generated before we co-operate together, reforms will be de- 
layed for ages. The only mode whereby public success can be 
achieved in our day is by the union on general points, of b ien 
differing on infinite particulars. But personalities constitute 
a serious danger. The only way to disarm them is to brave 
them. To court personalities is fatal to union ; to shun them, 
fatal to reputation. The friends of a cause ought to be able 
to dare all opinions. And all opinions might be dared by 
those in the right. There can be no quarrel unless two parties 
engage in it. And it is always in the power of one party to 
prevent it by refusing to be a party to it. Xo man can quarrel 
with another without that other's consent. Hence the veto 
of peace and amity is always in the hands of one of the dis- 
putants. It is often a duty to notice individual error. It is 
often indispensable. But the execution of such a duty would 
. not be so distasteful to the public as it now is, were it not for 
the unskilful manner in which it is generally done. If, when 
objections to a public man must be made, if they were well 
selected, and singly urged, without ill-will, and when once pre- 
sented left as a public warning, the practice would be felt to 
be useful and tolerable. Instead of this course, a miscellane- 
ous fire is extended to every imaginable peccadillo, and con- 
jectures called in when facts are exhausted, until what was, or 
should be, intended as a public lesson, becomes a gratification 
of private resentment. When retaliation usurps the desire to 
improve another, the contest sinks into personalities. 

I have often sent pupils out together in pairs to talk, with 



108 Public Speaking and Debate. 

all deliberation and caution, and to note how many expletives 
they employ, how many errors they commit, how insequential 
are their thoughts, and how inexact their language. Indeed, 
how few men have disciplined themselves in these respects ! 
How few ready, florid writers, or speakers, are precise ! How 
few men have the power of being coherent ! How much is 
said which is never meant, even by those who are most care- 
ful ! How few ever acquire the habit of thinking before they 
speak ! Passing from common life, let the experience of the 
bar and the closet be heard. Does not the shrewd lawyer, 
whose whole life is one long laborious study of accuracy, per- 
petually find the Act of Parliament, upon which many have 
laboured, open to three or four interpretations ? And does 
not the philosopher daily regret the vagueness of human lan- 
guage ? Then on what principle of good sense can we, with- 
out most patient deliberation, hurl at each other obnoxious 
epithets ? 

What eloquence is more touching than that of a simple 
tale of actual wrong ? The very absence of passion gives it 
force. The dispassionateness of its relation infuses the air of 
truth. The presence of passion leads us to suspect the partisan, 
and invective is felt to be the twin brother of exaggeration. 
Strength is always calm in battle. Truth imparts repose — the 
suffrage of mankind is always on the side of dignity. Dis- 
putants instinctively bear out the truth of all this. "When a 
man feels that he has a strong case, we have therefore no 
excitement, no self-returned verdict. A man who thinks he 
has a clear case, always feels he may safely leave it to the 
judgment of others. JSo barrister makes a long speech to the 
jury when the evidence is all on his side. Fitzroy Kelly 
never sheds tears except when he has a Tawell to defend. 

All which should be done for the adjustment of a difference 
is, that a man should quietly understate his case — that he 
should make no material assertion unaccompanied by the proof, 
that he should make the fairest allowance for his rival's excite- 



Laws of Personalities. 109 

inent, put the best possible construction on his words and acts, 
and leave the matter there. All whose suffrages are worth 
having will make the proper award on his side, without further 
trouble on his part. The reason of so many departures from 
this rule is the want of courage or the want of sense. It is a 
common opinion, that if a man does not bluster and retort, 
that he is deficient in spirit. It is this apprehension which 
betrays weak men into violence, and to prove themselves in- 
dependent they become rude and insolent, and mistake the part 
of the bravo for that of the hero. But a man of disciplined 
intelligence knows that courage always pursues its own resolute 
way without noise or ostentation, firmly preserves its indepen- 
dence, stands immoveable in frankness and kindness, corrects 
misrepresentation, repairs any injury it may have done, silences 
slander with the truth, and goes on its way. No wise man 
answers a fool according to his folly. He shows that it is folly, 
and abandons it to die by its own hands. 

A few years ago, a couple of Dutchmen, Yon Yampt and 
Van Bones, lived on friendly terms on the high hills of Lime- 
stone. At last they fell out over a dog. Yon Yampt killed 
Yan Bones' canine companion. Bones, choosing to assume the 
killing to have been intentional, sued Yampt for damages. 
They were called in due time into court, when the defendant 
in the case was asked by the judge whether he killed the dog. 
V Pe sure I kilt him," said Yampt, "but let Bones prove it." 
This being quite satisfactory, the plaintiff in the action was 
called on to answer a few questions, and among others he was 
asked by the judge at what amount he estimated the damages. 
He did not well understand the question, and so, to be a little 
plainer, the judge inquired what he thought the dog to be 
worth ? "Pe sure," replied Bones, " the dog was worth noth- 
ing, but since he was so mean as to kill him, he shall pay de 
full value of him." How many suits have occupied the atten- 
tion of courts — how many contests have engaged the time of 
the public, and have been waged with virulence and invective, 



110 Public Speaking and Debate. 

having no more worthy difference than that of Yon Vampt 
and Yan Bones ! 

At every step, however, we are admonished how conscien- 
tiously a man can be in the wrong. Many enter the quagmire 
of recrimination as a matter of duty rather than taste. The 
question is commonly put, " Ought we not to state all we 
know to be true ?" I answer, no ; unless it can be shown to 
be useful. Every man knows a thousand things which are 
true, but which it would advantage nobody to hear. When 
we essay to speak, the rule is imperative that we speak the 
truth, absolutely and truly the truth, if one may write so 
paradoxically ; but of what truth we will communicate, good 
sense must be the judge — utility the measure. If all truth 
must be published without regard to propriety, William 
Rufus, who drew a tooth per day from a rich Jew's head, to 
induce him to tell where his treasures were concealed, was a 
great moral philosopher. " Well, but what a man believes to 
be true and useful may he not state V 1 will be inquired of me. 
I answer, no ; unless he can prove it. If every man stated 
his suspicions, no character would be safe from aspersion — 
society would be a universal school for scandal. Suspicion is 
the food of slander. What public man is at this hour safe 
from it ? There is already more actual evil in existence than 
the virtuous are likely soon to correct ; and little necessity 
exists for suspicion to supply hypothetical cases. "But to 
bring the question to the point," observes the reader, " if two 
disputants have respectively ' proved ' the fitness of the 
epithets they have mutually applied, are they not justified in 
having used them ?" I answer, avoid it as often as possible. 
It is the complainant usurping the province of the jury and 
the judge. It is the vice of controversy, that each disputant 
will unite the offices of witness, jury, and judge, give his own 
evidence, return his own verdict, and pronounce the sentence 
in his own favour. A function which no man would tolerate 
in a court of justice, every controversialist exercises with an 



Laws of Personalities. Ill 

inflexible will. It is this which has been the real " disgrace" 
of religious, political, and literary discussions. That precau- 
tion which the wisdom of the lawyer has taken against human 
frailty, is not lightly to be set aside. Lawyers are the phi- 
losophers of disputes, and have wisely taken out of the hands 
of interest, petulance, and passion the power of deciding upon 
their own case. Yet disputants will do that unhesitatingly, 
with regard to each other, which in a court of justice would 
long engage the anxious and earnest attention of twelve unin- 
terested, dispassionate, and patient men. 

The first principle which should actuate all human inter- 
course, public or private, is that of aiming at the improvement 
of each other. This neither passion nor interest should 
obscure. Yet how often do men come into the field, not as 
true friends who have differences to adjust, but as adversaries 
bent on each other's destruction ? Those who would decry a 
duel in the usual way, will yet fight a duel on paper. We 
have nothing to do with our neighbour as his evil genius — we 
ought, like Rudolph, to be the Providence of our friends. The 
people boast how far they are in advance of the Government, 
but in respect of etiquette they are far behind. Even des- 
potic states admit, in theory, that the punishment of criminals 
is in itself indefensible malignity — that only so far as the 
brute ignorance of others renders it necessary as an example, 
ought it ever to be attempted. The improvement and not the 
mortification in person or character is that at which juris- 
prudence and well understood justice now aim. Disagreement 
is a contingency of human nature, from which it will never be 
freed until men are cast in one monotonous mould. Differences 
are in themselves as natural and as innocent as variation in 
form, colour, or strength. It is the manner in which those 
who differ seek to adjust their differences, that constitutes any 
disgrace there may be in any case. Unless we have prated of 
philosophy in vain, we ought never to take up arms against 
an enemy without at the same time keeping his welfare in 



112 Public Speaking and Debate, 

view, as well as our own defence. Before the genius of this 
aphorism, the prosaic commonplaces of life dissolve. Man 
rises to nobility. To consult the welfare of friends is kind, 
obliging, amiable ; but the publicans do even the same. To 
promote the welfare of enemies — to do good to those who 
hate us — is generous. Higher than Brutus, we walk the plat- 
form with Coriolanus. Our true business is not with good 
and bad men, but with fair or unfair, right or wrong conduct. 
We ought never to disparage, never to impute evil intentions, 
and in the strongest cases leave the way open for explanation 
and reconciliation. We may be firm and yet fraternal — ■ 
manly arid yet kind ! 

Locke called his opponents "irrational," Addison "mis- 
creants," Dr. Clarke "crazy," Paley "insane," and Sir Walter 
Scott makes Sir Everard Waverley class "rakes, gamblers, 
and Whigs " together. These are the mere expletives of 
polemical and political partisanship — the commonplace effer- 
vescences of passion — old as ignorance, universal as vulgarity. 
They have no novelty — no originality. The elegant contrast 
of controversy lies in contrast of argument — this is ever fresh 
and instructive. All recrimination being common to both 
disputants, will in time, like the common quantities in an 
algebraic equation, be struck out of disputes — as only making 
more difficult the finding of the true result. If any epithets 
are retained in use, they will be confined to error rather 
than showered on the erring, and the limit of their applica- 
tion will exclude personal disparagement. 

Our Reformers disagree not about reforms, but modes of 
advocacy. I think it can be shown that our Government sel- 
dom, if ever, pass laws against purpose, but against extrava- 
gance of language, in which passion, or hate, or unskilfulness, 
express that purpose. Passion and hate may be founded in 
sincerity but not in wisdom ; and were men rhetorically wiser, 
they might aim at more and accomplish more than they now can. 

It admits of demonstration that the progress of reform is 



Laws of Personalities. 113 

mainly hindered among us by a few metaphysical mistakes. 
The diatribes respectively hurled by rich and poor against 
each other arise in an error of generalisation. Both mean 
the truth, but they express more than the truth, and out of 
this error come division and ill-will. 

Generalisations in science have to be stated circumspectly 
and with qualification. A generalisation finds a resemblance 
in perhaps one point only, and that resemblance probably in 
only the majority of a class. If you accuse in exact language 
a class of stones possessing a certain property, which is not 
possessed by all, the exceptional stones will not be scandalised 
as the same number of men would, whom you happened to 
include in a carelessly-worded, disparaging, general assertion. 
It is of no use that you say to the person whom you have 
wrongly accused — " 0, I did not mean you ; I meant to allow 
that there were exceptions." Men naturally suspect that he who 
is incapable of speaking with accuracy is incapable of thinking 
with accuracy, and if they acquit you of incapacity, they 
convict you of carelessness. 

Facts make up accusative propriety ; and if the facts are not 
absolutely universal, and with grades of human character they 
never are, the application of accusation must always be special. 

It is a wise maxim in jurisprudence that ten guilty men 
had better escape than that one innocent man should suffer. 
So with rhetorical and public judgments. The one innocent 
man condemned will do both judge and justice more harm 
than the ten guilty who escape. 

Men live on good opinion to a great extent. When, there- 
fore, you take away a man's good name, you take away that 
which is, in many cases, the basis of self-respect. In the 
advocacy of a good cause, then, let us beware how we proceed 
with personalities, lest we undo in one direction what we seek 
to do in another. 

A. de Morgan, in his reply to Sir W. Hamilton, in their 
recent discussion on the origination of Formal Logic, makes 



114 Public Speaking and Debate. 

these useful remarks : — " In the day of swords, it was one of 
the objects of public policy to prevent people from sticking 
them into each other's bodies on trivial grounds. We now 
wear pens ; and it is as great a point to hinder ourselves from 
sticking them into each other's characters, without serious and 
well-considered reasons. To this end I have always considered 
it as one of the first and most special rules, that conviction of 
the truth of a charge is no sufficient reason for its promulga- 
tion. I assert that no one is justified in accusing another 
until he has his proof ready ; and that in the interval, if 
indeed it be right that there should be any interval, between 
the charge and the attempt at substantiation, all the leisure 
and energies of the accuser are the property of the accused.' 7 

Thomas Cooper, D. D., Bishop of Winchester, in 1589, 
issued a pamphlet with this title : — " An Admonition to the 
People of England : wherein are answered, not onely the 
slaunderous vntruethes, reproachfully vttered by Martin the 
Libeller, but also many other Crimes by some of his broode, 
objected generally against all Bishops, and the chief e of the 
Cleargie, purposely to deface and discredite the present state 
of the Church." 

Even the Bishop of Exeter would not now, in 1849, think 
of inditing such a title page against his most decided oppo- 
nents. It is not that truth and falsehood, or right and wrong, 
have changed ; but that good taste and private justice are in 
the ascendant. We no longer (in good society) attack the 
motives, but the principles of men. 

Let us apply the rule we have been illustrating to Parlia- 
mentary controversies. If every member were to say what is 
true, or what he believes to be true, of another, our legislative 
assemblies would soon come to resemble those of the United 
States, in one of which, not long ago, a member in audience 
being tired in listening to the member in possession of the 
house, got up and said, " Mr. Speaker, I should like to know 
how long that there blackguard is to go on tiring me to death 



Laws of Personalities. 115 

in this manner ?" The Irish House of Commons, before the 
Union, furnishes a specimen of what must happen, if senti- 
ments are to be expressed without rule: " I will not call him 
villain, because he is chancellor of the exchequer ; I will not 
call him liar, because he is a privy counsellor ; but I will say 
of him, that he is one who has taken advantage of the 
privilege of this house, to utter language to which in any 
other place my answer would have been a blow." Such were 
the expressions used by Mr. Grattan towards Mr. Corrie ; 
and a duel was the immediate result. We endeavour to keep 
clear of this blackguardism ; not because it is unimportant 
whether a man lies or not, but because we have learned the 
good sense of not impugning integrity upon suspicion, and 
when we can impugn it on fact, we need no harsh words — 
the fact is the severest judgment. 

De Morgan, whom I have just quoted, relates that, the late 
Professor Vince was once arguing at Cambridge against duel- 
ling, and some one said, "Well, but, Professor, what could you 
do if any one called you a liar ?" " Sir," said the fine old 
fellow in his peculiar brogue, " I should tell him to pruv; and 
if he did pruv it, I should be ashamed of myself ; and if he 
didn't, he ought to be ashamed of himself." 

The obvious laws we should impress on all who controvert, 
seem to be these : — 

1. To consult in all cases the improvement of those whom 
we oppose, and to this end argue not for our gratification, or 
pride, or vanity, but for their enlightenment. 

2. To invert the vulgar mode of judgment, and not, when 
we guess at motives, guess the worst, but adopt the best con- 
struction the case admits. 

3. To distinguish between the personalities which impugn 
the judgment, and those that criminate character, and never 
to advance accusations of either kind without distinct and 
indisputable proof — never to assail character on suspicion, pro- 
bability, belief, or likelihood. 



116 Public Speaking and Debate. 

4. To keep distinct the two kinds of personalities, never 
mixing up those which pertain to character with those which 
pertain to judgment. 

5. To never meddle with either, unless some public good is 
to come out of it. It is not enough that a charge is true, it 
must be useful to prefer it before a wise publicist will meddle 
with it. 

6. To dare all personalities ourselves — to brave all attacks 
■ — to defy the judgment of mankind, and when we are assailed, 

, unfailingly to respect ourselves, and keep in view the better- 
ance of him whom we oppose, rather than our own personal 
gratification.* 

Were the errors discussed in this chapter confined to the 
vulgar, we might confide in the spread of ordinary intelligence 
to dissipate them. But it is otherwise. Who would have 
expected to have found the " sweetest and most genuine poet- 
ess of the age," C. B., writing in the Athenceum a letter of 
anger, reproach, and condemnation, of Mr. Howitt, for having 
written something which she confesses she had "never read." 
Literary etiquette seems to have received no improvement with 
time. Hazlitt, Byron, Southey, and other luminaries of litera- 
ture, sink to the level of the meanest of mankind when they 
are found engaged in the adjustment of their differences. 
When turning over the periodicals of their times, one is amazed 
at the flood of vituperation, the envy, jealousy, and miserable 

, disparagement of each other. Yet if all this littleness exists, 
better that it be expressed that one may see what our gods 
are made of. Rudeness is healthier than hypocrisy, and, 
therefore, the policy which conceals rankling malignity is more 
pernicious than the display of it. Let it be avowed until men 
are convinced that it is unreasonable. Leigh Hunt has the 
credit of having prophesied long ago that the old philosophic 

* For an enlarged consideration of this question see articles (Nos. 20 and 24 of the 
" People's Press"), entitled the " Philosophy of Personalities," where I have treated 
of their introduction into public parties. 



Laws of Personalities. lit 

conviction would revive among us as a popular one, that re- 
crimination, denouncements, and threats, should be put an end 
to, and the perception prevail that the errors of mankind arise 
rather from the want of knowledge than the defect of good- 
ness. But what is the history of modern parties ? Has not 
recriminative error broken up the best of them into miserable 
sections ? " Stupidity" can be informed, " ignorance" can be 
enlightened, but the "collision of interest and passion, and 
the perversities of self-will and self-opinion " destroy all before 
them. What hope is there of the improvement of the unedu- 
cated, while those who should know better perpetuate the 
infectious example ? Men, whose names it is needless to cite, 
and whom, prior to experience, I could not have believed to 
be unconscious of the fact, I have found unaware that simpli- 
city in the expression of passion is the lesson of nature and of 
genius, and the greatest discovery of rhetorical experience. 
It is, however, clear that there is no hope for the efficient 
progress of the order of industry while their natural leaders 
and exemplars depart from that propriety which alone is 
strength. 

The necessity of enforcing this most practical part of 
-rhetoric (the Rhetoric of Dispute), which is taught in no 
Mechanics, or Literary Institution, is evidenced in the dis- 
couraging fact that an impartial, impersonal, and dispassionate 
tone is almost fatal in newspaper and periodical literature. 
We address a populace to whom nothing that is just seems 
spirited. We must be offensively personal or we are pronounced 
tame. L^nless we are rancorous we are not relished. The 
reason is that most men, when stung by a sense of injury, are 
naturally precipitated from extreme to extreme. Their opin- 
ions, when sincere, " are not produced by the ordinary law of 
intellectual births, by induction or inference, but are equivo- 
cally generated" by the heat of fervid emotion, wrought upon 
by some sense of unbearable oppression. 

So it ever is with the intellectually undisciplined, of what- 



118 Public Speaking and Debate. 

ever class — they believe all strength manifests itself in spasms, 
that Truth is a descendant from the Furies, that no man can 
be brave who does not bluster, nor have enthusiasm if he do 
not write in hysterics. But I quit this subject, repeating the 
fine language of one whom I have several times quoted : — 
" Defect in manners is usually the defect of fine perceptions. 

* * A beautiful behaviour is better than a beautiful form : 
it gives a higher pleasure than statues or pictures. It is the 
finest of the fine arts. * * The person who screams or 
uses the superlative degree, or converses with heat, puts whole 
drawing-rooms to flight. If you wish to be loved, love measure. 

* * Coolness and absence of heat and haste indicate fine 
qualities. A gentleman makes no noise : a lady is serene. 

* * Let us leave hurry to slaves. The compliments and 
ceremonies of our breeding should signify, however remotely, 
the grandeur of our destiny." 



CHAPTER XXII. 

QUESTIONING. 

The Socratic method of disputation or artful questioning, (of 
which Zeno, the Eleatic, was the author,) by which an oppo- 
nent- is entrapped into concessions, and thus confuted, is rather 
fit for wranglers and sophists than reasoners. There is too 
much reason to believe that Socrates condescended to this 
course often at the expense of ingenuousness. It is said in 
his defence that he did it not as the sophists, for the sake of 
confounding virtue, but for the purer purpose of confounding 
dexterous vice. It is, however, beneath the dignity of a 
reasoner to betray his opponent into the truth. 

Questioning, however, is an essential instrument. A high 
authority, Dr. Arnold, has put this in a useful light : — "An 
inquiring spirit is not a presumptuous one, but the very con- 



Questioning. 119 

trary. He whose whole recorded life was intended to be our 
perfect example, is described as gaining instruction in the 
Temple by hearing and asking questions — the one is almost 
useless without the other. We should ask questions of our 
books and of ourselves — what is its purpose — by what means 
it proceeds to effect that purpose — whether we fully understand 
the one — whether we go along with the other. Do the argu- 
ments satisfy us ? do the descriptions convey lively and distinct 
images to us ? do we understand all the allusions to persons 
or things I In short, does our mind act over again from the 
writer's guidance what his acted before ? do we reason as he 
reasoned, conceive as he conceived, think and feel as he thought 
and felt ? or if not, can we discern where and how far we do 
not, and can we tell why we do not ? 

Questioning has also a place in Rhetoric as well as in 
research. Frankly conducted, it is a mode of conviction with- 
out offence. To whatever an opponent urges, with which we 
do not agree, of course we have some objection. Put this 
objection incidentally, and ask it as a question what answer 
can be given to it ? This is a good conversational mode of 
debate, where the improvement of an opponent, rather than a 
triumph over him, is the object. It is not showy, but it is 
searching. 

In a similar way confidence may be acquired by diffident 
speakers. A noviciate conversationalist is shy of taking part 
in debating a topic, lest he should not be able to sustain him- 
self. To such I have said, Put your argument in the form of 
an objection which some would urge, and beg some one of the 
company to tell you what he would say in reply. If to this 
answer you have an objection further, put that also in the 
querist form ; for a man will be able to ask a question who 
would never be able to make a speech. By this easy means 
the most diffident may get into conversation, and when once 
excited will speak freely enough — perhaps too freely. A 
coward will fight when he grows warm in strife. 



120 Public Speaking and Debate. 

This method has another advantage. By this means a 
novice learns the best answers which the company can give to 
his own argument, and thus without risk of exposure he learns 
their weakness or finds out their strength. He has also taken 
the guage of his opponents' powers, and can, if he sees well, 
match himself against them. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

REPETITION. 

The Reformer who comprehends his mission attempts the 
discipline of the people in nobler views. Only great natures 
are heroic by instinct. But it is not more true that all men 
are eloquent sometimes than that all men are noble sometimes ; 
but few continue so for want of the influence of suitable circum- 
stances to nourish and sustain the feeling. Every man is great 
when he lays down Plutarch, but the feeling dies away in the 
contact with the lower life of cities. To remedy this the 
Reformer has recourse to reiteration. 

In introducing a new topic to an auditory, a wise speaker 
repeats the same sentiment and argument in many different 
forms of expression, each in itself brief, but all together 
affording such an expansion of the sense to be conveyed, and 
detaining the mind upon it, as the case may require. Care 
must be taken that the repetition may not be too glaringly ap- 
parent ; the variations must not consist in the mere use of 
other synonymous words, but what has been expressed in 
appropriate terms may be repeated in metaphorical ; the ante- 
cedent or consequent of any argument, or the parts of an 
antithesis may be transposed, or several different points, that 
have been enumerated, presented in a varied order. 

It is given to reiteration to accomplish that which is denied 



Poetry. 121 

to power. The reputation of Robespierre, now breaking a 
little through clouds of calumny, denser and darker than ever 
before obscured human name, is a striking illustration of the 
omnipotence of repetition. The most eloquent of its vindica^ 
tors has thus sketched his triumph : — 

" Still deeper in the shade, and behind the chief of the 
National Assembly, a man almost unknown began to move, 
agitated by uneasy thoughts, which seemed to forbid him to be 
silent and unmoved ; he spoke on all occasions, and attacked 
all speakers indifferently, including Mirabeau himself. Driven 
from the tribune, he ascended it next day ; overwhelmed with 
sarcasm, coughed clown, disowned by all parties, lost amongst 
the eminent champions who fixed public attention, he was in- 
cessantly beaten, but never dispirited. It might have been 
said, that an inward and prophetic genius revealed to him the 
vanity of all talent, and the omnipotence of a firm will and 
unwearied patience, and that an inward voice said to him, 
' These men who despise thee are thine ; all the changes of 
this revolution, which now will not deign to look upon thee, 
will eventually terminate in thee, for thou hast placed thyself 
in the way like the inevitable excess, in which all impulse 
ends.'" 



CHAPTER XXIV. 



Such proverbs as " poets are born and not made" have en- 
couraged the notion, that inspiration does everything for the 
poet, and art nothing ; whereas inspiration gives him the idea, 
and art enables him to express it. It is very probable that 
" creative" capacity is an element in the poetic nature which art 
does not make, but educates only. Yet experience teaches us 
that decided poetic power sometimes sinks into the common- 
6 



122 Public Speaking and Debate. 

place, and that that which has been pronounced mediocre has 
been cultured into excellence. We, therefore, ought to pause 
before treating so disdainfully, as is the fashion, the humble ver- 
sifiers who, from time to time, solicit the world's notice. Cer- 
tainly Byron's " Hours of Idleness" were as weak a specimen 
of the poetic, as patrician or plebeian fancy ever concocted. It 
gave no sign of that fierce power which was afterwards evoked 
from the same pen. Both Burns and Elliott have been greatly 
indebted — perhaps as much indebted to art as to their ideas, 
for the distinction which attaches to their names. Many a 
name of note now, might be cited, whose infantile -genius was 
rocked in the cradle of doggrel. 

Between Bhyme and Poetry there is a great gulph, which 
patient study alone may bridge over. Some of the interme- 
diate steps may be indicated. The gradations may be ex- 
plained, which, though all may not be able to pass through, all 
may be able to understand, and determine their own position 
in reference to them. 

A Sunderland candidate for Parnassian laurels lately pre- 
sented the public with the following very A-B-C effort : — 

Two gentlemen dined at my honse, 

For breakfast they had some ham; 
Says 1, " Are you going to Hartlepool?" 

" Oh yes," says they, " we am." 

Even the rudest kind of Terse should have some qualities not 
found in prose. What Poetry is it is not easy to define satis- 
factorily. But this is agreed upon, that whatever is called 
Poetry ought to contain an idea or ideas above the level of 
Prose, and such as cannot be so well expressed in Prose. Now 
ordinary Prose, if tolerable, is grammatical, but the verse 
above quoted has not this quality. In verse the correspond- 
ing terminations of lines should rhyme^ — this rule is also neg- 
lected. Corresponding lines should have the same number of 
syllables in them — that is, should have the same measure, the 
same quantity of accented and unaccented sounds : the versi- 



Poetry, 123 

fier we have cited seeins innocent of any such requirement. 
Indeed, the majority of those who publish rhymes never have 
paid the least attention to these essential elements of verse. 
Many, indeed, have never heard that there are such elements. 
Most of the rejected " Poetry" sent to periodicals and news- 
papers is of this class ; for persons who understand the 
mechanical part of poetry frequently know what they are 
about, know their own powers, and do not send out produc- 
tions which have not some stamp of excellence upon them. 

A young mind of any force or emulation commonly takes 
to the experiment of verse. The exercise should always be 
encouraged and criticised. In this way the new thinker may 
learn the power of words agreeably, and the nature of elevated 
ideas. He will consult Dictionaries of Synonyms. So much 
the better. The habit will increase his knowledge. He will 
keep what he acquires, because he will get it when he wants it. 
Turn his ambition to useful account. If you cannot make 
him a poet, you may make him a grammarian, a linguist, and 
a thinker, and save kim from making himself ridiculous by 
teaching him the difference between Prose, Rhyme, Terse, and 
Poetry. Let it be understood that " all persons may rhyme, 
but that it is given Gnly to few to compose thoughts — the first 
requisites of which are, that they be new, striking and beau- 
tiful, and for the expression of which it is further necessary 
that there be gifts and acquirements of language infinitely 
above those required for common purposes."* 

\Ye may usefully trace the distinctions suggested a little 
further. Mere rhyme often assists the memory, and if nervous, 
it may better strike the understanding than prose. Of this 
quality are some old lines on Feasting and Fasting, beginning 
thus : — 

Accustom early in your youth 
To lay embargo on vour mouth ; 
And let no rarities invite 
To pall and glut your appetite ; 

* " Chambers - Jour-nay No. 21. 1544 



224 Public Speaking and Debate. 

But check it always, and give o'er 
With a desire of eating more ; 
For where one dies by inanition, 
A thousand perish by repletion.* 

Old Dr. Johnson had not a fine ear, and he judged the 
artistic quality of poetry chiefly by the calculation of syllables. 
He was a poet himself, but was chiefly distinguished for his 
power of making verse. His knowledge of literary art and 
his manly sense have given an elevation to his productions 
which have won for them distinction, and which show how 
good sense will command respect where imagination is want- 
ing. I quote his Prologue spoken by Garrick at the opening 
of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, because, as well as illus- 
trating his powers, it illustrates the topics of this book : — 

When Learning's triumph o'er her barbarous foes 
First rear'd the stage, immortal Shakspeare rose. 
Each change of many-colour'd life he drew, 
Exhausted worlds, and then imagined new : 
Existence saw him spurn her bounded reign, 
And panting Time toiled after him in vain, 
His powerful strokes presiding truth impress 1 *?, 
And unresisted passion storm'd the breast 

Then Jonson came, instructed from the school, 

To please in method, and invent by rule ; 

His studious patience and laborious art 

By regular approach essay'd the heart. 

Cold approbation gave the lingering bays, 

Eor those who durst not censure, scarce could praise; 

A mortal born, he met the general doom, 

But left, like Egypt's kings, a lasting tomb. 

The wits of Charles found easier ways to fame, 
Nor wish'd for Jonson's art, nor Shakspeare's flame, 
Themselves they studied — as they felt, they writ — 
Intrigue was plot, obscenity was wit. 
Vice always found a sympathetic friend — 
They pleased their age, and did not aim to mend; 
Tet bards like these aspired to lasting praise, 
And proudly hoped to pirnp in future days. 



* E. Koynard, M. D., 1150. 



Poetry. 125 

Their cause was general, their supports were strong, 
Their slaves were willing, and their reign was long; 
Till shame regained the post that sense betrayM, 
And -virtue call'd oblivion to her aid. 

Then, crush 'd by rules, and weaken'd as refined, 
For years the power of tragedy declined ; 
From bard to bard the frigid caution crept, 
Till declamation roar'd whilst passion slept ; 
Yet still did virtue deign the stage to tread, 
Philosophy remain*d though nature fled, 
But forced, at length, her ancient reign to quit, 
She saw great Faustus lay the ghost of wit; 
Exulting folly hail'd the joyous day, 
And pantomime and song confirmed her sway* 

Hard is his lot that here by fortune placed, 
Must watch the wild vicissitudes of taste; 
With every meteor of caprice miist play, 
Ar_d chase the new-blown bubbles of the day. 
Ah ! let not censure term our fate our choice, 
The stage but echoes back the public voice ; 
The drama's laws the drama's patrons give, 
For we that live to please, must please to live. 

Then prompt no more the follies you decry, 

As tyrants doom their tools of guilt to die ; 

'Tis yours this night to bid the reign commence 

Of rescued nature, and reviving sense; 

To chase the charms of sound, the pomp of show, 

For useful mirth and salutary woe ; 

Bid scenic virtue form the rising age, 

And truth diffuse her radiance from the stage. 

This prologue lias wit, energy, and striking sense ; but 
Johnson's want of fancy is more evident in his "Death of 
Charles the Twelfth," which has his perfect force, but at the 
close only rises into the poetical. The last two lines have the 
true genius of poetical inspiration : — 

On what foundation stands the warrior's pride, 

How just his hopes, let Swedish Charles decide; 

A frame of adamant, a soul of fire, 

No dangers fright him, and ne labours tire; 

O'er love, o'er fear, extends bis wide domain, 

TTnconquer'd lord of pleasure and of pain ; 

Ne joys to him pacific sceptres yield, 

War sounds the trump, he rushes to the field. 



126 Public Speaking and Debate, 

Behold surrounding kings their power combine, 

And one capitulate, and one resign. 

Peace courts his hand, hut spreads her charms in vain, 

"Think nothing gained, 1 ' he cries, "till naught remain. 

On Moscow's walls till Gothic standards fly, 

And all be' mine beneath the polar sky." 

The inarch begins in military state, 

And nations on his eye suspended wait. 

Stern famine guards the solitary coast, 

And winter barricades the realm of frost: 

He conies — not want and cold his course delay — 

Hide, blushing glory, hide Pultowa's day ! 

The vanquished hero leaves his broken bands, 

And shows his misery in distant lands. 

Condemn'd a needy suppliant to wait, 

While ladies interpose and slaves debate. 

But did not chance at length her error mend? 

Did no subverted empire mark his end? 

Did rival monarchs give the fatal wound ? 

Did hostile millions press him to the ground 

His fall was destined to a barren strand, 

A petty fortress and a dubious hand, 

He left a name at which the world grew pale, 

To r point a moral, or adorn a tale. 

Johnson was a mechanical poet. Allan Cunningham^ 
speaking of Chevy Chase, a genuine poem, which Sir Philip 
Sidney said fell on his ears like the sound of a trumpet, sug- 
gests to us the highest elements of poetry. " ' Chevy Chase 7 
and ' Sir Andrew Barton,' are history and truth : but history 
excited, elevated, and inspired : truth all life, spirit, and hero- 
ism." " Poetry," says Gimllan, is "thought on fire." It is 
in its impassioned truth that we feel its presence ; it is for the 
beauty of ideas, distinct from the beauty of things 7 that we 
admire it. 

Personification is the soul of poetry. In few of our modern 
writers is this quality more remarkable than in Douglas Jer- 
rold, whose writings are characterised by the omnipresence of 
personification. Bulwer presents more of the appearance of 
personification in his writings : but Jerrold more of the reality. 
Bulwer's personifications seem often to be artificial, and sug-' 
gested by capital letters, while Jerrold's are presented in 
deep-set finished pictures. Many are the attributes of poetry, 



Poetry. 12T 

but its grandest power is personification. It peoples the 
World of fancy and thought with new forms. It individualises 
sentiments — it adds to our intellectual acquaintances. How 
dim and indefinite are our impressions of the past ! but in the 
hands of Bryant what a majestic entity it becomes, in that 
poem beginning — 

Thou -unrelenting Past ! 
Strong are the barriers round thy dark domain, 

And fetters sure and fast 
Hold all that enter thy unbreathing reign. 



What a splendid ideality is in this poem realised ! What 
multitudinous forms are bodied forth ! It is like the revela- 
tion of eternity, and the mind trembles and thrills as on the 
verge of a new world. 

Poetry is found in various states — sometimes in the invoca- 
tion of historic names, in allusions, in illustrations, in similes 
— sometimes in intensity of language, and sometimes in inten- 
sity of feeling. 

Poetry is often found independent of the verse it forms, as 
gems are found unset. " We would define poetry to be that 
mode of expression by which intensity of feeling on any sub- 
ject is conveyed from one mind to another. Of course, the 
more just, the more striking, the mode of expression, the 
more complete and rapid will be the communication ; hence — 
and still more, because many persons have not courage to dive 
beneath a rough surface — it is desirable that the poet should 
be able to clothe his thoughts in mellifluous language. But 
words are not poetry. Witness the beautiful idea of Professor 
Heeren — " Persepolis, rising above the deluge of years." This, 
being a translated passage, is not dependent upon phraseology 
for its beauty. But who does not feel its exquisiteness, pic- 
turing at once the almost miraculous stability of those thread- 
like columns which the intemperate policy of Alexander failed 
to overthrow, and the vague, shapeless uncertainty which 



128 Public Speaking and 1>ebate. 

clouds the period to which their erection is attributed ? The 
whole passage forms a most poetically drawn picture. 

" Again : — ' Time sadly overcometh all things, and is now 
dominant, and sitteth upon a sphinx, and looketh unto Mem- 
phis and old Thebes ; while his sister, Oblivion, reclineth 
semi-somnous on a pyramid, gloriously triumphing, making 
puzzles of Titanian erections, and turning old glories into 
dreams. History sinketh beneath her cloud. The traveller, 
as he paceth amazedly through those deserts, asketh of her, 
Who builded them ? and she mumbleth something, but what 
it is he knoweth not.' 

11 Is not this poetry ? and yet how quaint, almost inharmo- 
nious is its structure. Compare it with the famous simile in 
Pope's Homer, beginning— 

Thus, -when the moon, refulgent lamp of night. 

Will this passage, replete with the most gorgeous epithets, 
and clothed in the most harmonious verse, bear a comparison 
with the strangely-apparelled poetry of Sir Thomas Browne ? 
It is not our ear Which prompts the verdict— it is our innate 
feeling of truth and beauty. If thus j>oetic genius can exist 
independent and despite of phraseology, may we not suppose 
it to be given (we do not say in a high degree) to multitudes 
of those whom the world would never accuse of being poets ? 
Our daily experience confirms this. We have heard a servant 
describe scenery with a beauty of feeling and an imagery which 
was true poetry ; and we hear a child talk poetry to her doll. 
Facility of illustration is an attribute of poetic genius we have 
met with in a labourer."* 

An instance of the highest form of poetry is Blanco White's 
great Sonnet to Night, which is perhaps the distinctest addi- 
tion to human speculation which the genius of the thinker has 
ever made. It happens, also, to be one of the most accom- 

* " Sharpe's 



Poetry. 129 

plished efforts of Elocution to deliver it well. It requires great 
and varied power, and the last line is remarkable for the dis- 
tinctness of enunciation required : — 

Mysterious Night ! when our first parent knew 

Thee from report divine, ud heard thy name, 

Did he not tremhle for this lovely frame, 
This glorious canopy of light and blue? 
Tet, 'neath a curtain of translucent dew, 

Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame, 

Hesperus with the host of heaven came, 
And lo ! creation widened in man's view. 
Who could have thought such darkness lay conceal'd 

Within thy beams, O Sun? or who could find, 
Whilst fruit, and leaf, and insect stood revealed. 

That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind ? 
Why do we, then, shun death, with anxious strife? 
If Light conceals so much — wherefore not Life ? 

The previous discovery of Truth is implied by Rhetoric, 
which is the art of communicating Truth ; and of all the forms 
of the enforcement of Truth, Poetry is the highest. All the 
powers of language, all the graces of literature, all the re- 
sources of genius, and nature, and feeling, are employed to 
illustrate that splendour of expression, that harmony of thought, 
which, wedded to harmony of time and sound, men call Poesy. 



" Logic of Fact3," or Plain Hints on Reasoning, by G. J. Holyoake, is 
published in uniform style with this work. 




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